


Us Against the Universe

by CruelisnotMason



Series: Multi-chap fics for an all-nighter [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Ending, Amnesia, Dreams vs. Reality, Emotional, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Memory Loss, Mutual Pining, Not Epilogue Compliant, Slow Build, Villain Character Death, non-permanent animal death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:53:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22839604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CruelisnotMason/pseuds/CruelisnotMason
Summary: “Keith,” he addresses him directly. “How’s your day going?”A simple question, not sounding caring even– but Keith looks so perplexed at the directness.His widened eyes relax, and a small smile appears on his face. “What a you-thing to ask a complete stranger.”
Relationships: Allura/Pidge | Katie Holt, Keith/Shiro (Voltron), Lance/Pidge | Katie Holt, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Past Allura/Lance, one-sided Keith/Hunk
Series: Multi-chap fics for an all-nighter [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1356688
Comments: 76
Kudos: 91





	1. You Found Me

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: Changed the title...! “When all the stars are starry blurs, will you remember me?” seemed rad but also too damn long D:
> 
> Thanks so much @[psiten](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/psiten) & @[juliasets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/juliasets) for beta-ing this first chapter!
> 
> I’ve been dying to post this, honestly! I’ve been mapping out the story since last year because I really wanted to create an alternative ending to what the last season gave us.
> 
> Major tags are already there! Only minor things will be added.
> 
> Enjoy and consider leaving a comment! It helps staying motivated~

Shiro sips at his drink – it’s a fruity, non-alcoholic one with a rubbery sweet taste despite the zero calorie it is advertised with. The aberrant smell should have been a hint in the first place, yet he pulls a surprised grimace at the first taste. 

Despite the odd flavor, Shiro continues to take sip after sip, if only to give his mouth something to do. Part of him soberly accepted that this will be his choice of drink from now on. Diet sodas and sugar-free cocktails all the way.

Lately, his stomach had shown the first sign of getting chubby, unlike his usual sharp edges. And Shiro isn't ready to hear everyone at work point it out. He’s not even thirty, but they all love joking about him becoming an old man. Shiro would describe himself as a gentle soul, but the micro-aggression of his co-workers calling him 'dad-aged' slowly starts piling up.

But he hasn't come to this place to dwell on work-related issues. It’s Friday evening and he sits in his favorite bar. It's Friday, which means he took a short walk from his office at the Garrison down the small road as usual, and arrived at this place that is seeked by people who like cheap booze and company. Men from the city rarely come here, and the customers mind their own business. That's not the only reason why Shiro likes it; The place isn't shabby, but it's also not uptight. They play music from the 2430’s and always have a free seat at the bar for people who don't like to feel lonely. 

His co-workers never come here, and that's a plus; he likes them fine, but wouldn't want to meet them after work too. Shiro is especially grateful that Iverson never found his way here, so he can unwind in peace.

Some days – and _today_ is one of those days – the TV hanging in the right corner over the bar is obnoxiously loud. The noise of the sports channel unnecessarily tinny and thin, and they could just turn it off, but... Who cares for background noise while watching football anyways? Sometimes the hum turns into a high-pitched tone, but other than Shiro, nobody seems bothered by it. So Shiro doesn't say anything either. Instead, he’s feigning interest in the ongoing game on the thin plasma screen in a lack of something better to do. As he’s watching thirty sweaty men on the tiny screen, only pixelated versions of the original, running back and forth to catch a flat round disc and slam it through the ring-shaped openings to both sides, he maps out a plan for the week, thinks about which bills he needs to pay and if he has to check his vehicle's tires for correct pressure anytime soon. Out of the blue, he also wonders how life seems so determined at the young age of 28. 

Shiro's not prepared for the loud squeak coming from the chair right next to him, or getting violently interrupted from his thoughts. With one glance he recognizes the dark hair, the tight black shirt and worn-out pants of the person right beside him. Shiro knows, but not knows knows him. He's been a regular for months, just like Shiro is. Yet it ook two and a half weeks for Shiro to see and recognize the strangers face because normally, he'd sit far away from him, brooding in a corner, and always sipping at a glass of water. It took some time until Shiro recognized a certain pattern whenever the guy appeared: Before anything else, he'd always slip his head through the door first and look around. He'd find Shiro's eyes and look at him, cast his eyes away but enter the bar and find himself a seat, usually in a corner, for him to take.

Since the first time Shiro realized the meaning of this pattern, he has felt on edge.

Right now his nerves are heightened. The stranger arrives within close proximity for the first time in this moment and acts as if there wasn't anything unusual about it, but Shiro's heart thunders in his chest. The guy orders a beer — not water — from the bartender, who in turn raises an eyebrow at Shiro before he serves the guy's order.

Shiro casts his eyes away and examines his fingers and knuckles as if he has seen them for the first time.

No matter how much he forces his eyes to stay where they are, Shiro can’t help the curious flicker of his eyes to the side. The man next to him can be summarized in one word: Beautiful. The big red scar that sits on his right cheek, changes nothing about that. The silky, black hair is quite unusual for the people around here, who more or less all wear the same buzzcut. Whereas anyone else's face around here is forgettable, that guy has the face of a warrior and soldier, and a model. Even though Shiro has never met this man before, his features feel as familiar as if they belong to an old friend who likes to blow off steam with Shiro after a long day at work.

The man sits in silence even though he’s sitting closer than ever for the first time in months. The more they sit in silence, the more Shiro feels the tension thickening around them, and even though the bartender quietly dries some glasses a few steps away, his eyes flicker back and forth between them both. Shiro feels like he should at least attempt conversation; he fumbles with words to address the guy and can’t find any that are casual enough to start. 

It turns out he doesn’t have to be the first one to speak. The young man’s eyes shift to him after he takes the first few sips from his beer, and he turns his head to face Shiro and offers a small smile. It doesn’t completely reach his eyes, looks worn and tired at the corners.

“Hey,” he greets casually and the odd thought strikes Shiro that despite his tired and worn demeanor he might be a few years younger than him, “You’re a regular here, right?”

Shiro nods slowly, mesmerized by his face, by the gentle but brooding eyes.

“Not proud to say I am,” he answers and sips on his drink, calculating, waiting. “New here?”

It takes a while before the stranger answers, busy brushing long strands of hair out of his face. Then, he takes a long pull at his beer that just arrived. Shiro doesn’t expect his next words. Or any at all.

“I grew up around here.”

He sounds melancholic. But anyone would be, Shiro guesses, if they are coming back to their hometown. He can’t help but snort, though.

“There’s nothing out here,” he says and cocks his head. “I wonder where a child could grow up in this vast and lonely desert.”

The guy doesn’t reply, just nurses his beer. Shiro only hears his deep exhale, not answering what might not have been a question. The music of the bar slowly fades into the background, and the low mumbling of some other regulars gets louder.

“I’m Shiro,” he holds his hand out, for lack of something better to say. The guy eyes him warily, squeezes his eyes shut.

“Nice to meet you,” the guy says with a sigh. He doesn’t shake the hand offered to him.

Shiro lets his hand sink after a moment. The tone of words was off. It shouldn’t sound so artificial. But Shiro tries not to let himself be discouraged.

“The same goes for me,” he says, smile frozen in place.

They drink in silence. There’s a lot that makes Shiro wonder about him: The big red scar on the side of his face (where the hell would someone get that?) and how, overall, he looks like he’s had it rough in life. If he grew up around here, did he ever leave? What work could he possibly have found out here? And why has Shiro never seen him around before? He, for sure, does not work at the Garrison – his hair is too long to be regulation and Shiro has never seen him there, either. And then there’s more that makes Shiro wonder, partly because of something that he can’t put his finger on: The stranger’s face looks otherworldly. Soft, gentle, …but rough at the same time. Shiro thinks that his eyes have a deep blueish color but couldn’t look long enough to see if it’s not really… _purple_.

On the small TV in the corner talks a news anchor in a blue suit with slick hair. Shiro has given up on watching the news, since recently, the speaking just muddles into an incomprehensible background noise with information that’s barely worth listening to. 

But other than Shiro, who only glances at the screen from time to time to see it still working, the stranger’s eyes are fixed on the blurry screen, watching whatever happens with a tortured demeanor. His shoulders only tense more when he notices Shiro’s gaze on him. His eyes shift to the side, then he turns his head to look at Shiro. 

Shiro expects him to cast his eyes away completely, but instead gets to watch the bright purple irises travel all over his face, stare at the bridge of his nose, then shift down to Shiro’s right arm and hand. On instinct, Shiro reaches for the left arm with his right hand, following Keith’s gaze, but then shakes his head and quickly pulls it back again. The stranger keeps staring, his eyes traveling up to the spot where Shiro’s shoulder meets his arm. 

Shiro’s mouth falls open, but he doesn’t say anything. It’s as if the guy sees something he cannot see. As if upon realizing only now what he’s doing, the stranger startles and stands, and is out of the door quicker than Shiro can blink.

  
  


After the incident, Shiro doesn’t go back for weeks. His nights are haunted by the intensity of those round purple eyes and the feeling that despite how unreal that person seemed, Shiro felt he was the truest thing he's ever seen.

Shiro keeps wondering what left him with that feeling. It’s not like there isn’t anybody else who truly feels “ _there_ ”. There are enough people around Shiro most of the time. It’s just the dull sense of them being flat caricatures of what they could be. _Real_.

He tries to talk to his husband once about it but stops himself. It could seem a little odd to talk about a guy other than his husband and call him ‘pretty’ and ‘real’.

These days, Shiro really feels the weight of not being young anymore – that said, he’s still young, but the day-to-day repeating job, seeing the faces of the same co-workers every day, coming home and barely having any energy left to talk to his husband take an additional toll on him. He becomes a little forgetful – and yet the guy’s face never fades from his mind.

It took all his restraint to not directly go for a drink after work again, so three weeks after their strange meeting, Shiro sits there again at the bar.

Upon hearing light steps approach his seat, the hair rises on his skin and he gets goosebumps all over. He doesn’t have to turn to know who it is.

“What’s your name?” Shiro asks him before the stranger can leave again.

“Keith,” he says, surprised. It’s new information, and yet it feels like Shiro knew it all along.

When he asks him about his day in return, Shiro comes up with stuff he did, because frankly, day to day it gets harder for him to remember what he does. There’s a blurred line between everything he does in the exact moment and everything that happened a few hours before, a milky nebula blocking his mind and his memories. There are days where Shiro goes by not remembering who he is, but it’s not like he ever knew how to be, how to exist differently, knowing who he is. Or did he?

Sometimes he thinks he’s dreaming and just never woke up from it.

“Keith,” he addresses him directly. “How’s your day going?”

A simple question, not sounding caring even – but Keith looks so perplexed at the directness. His widened eyes relax, and a small smile appears on his face. “What a _you-thing_ to ask a complete stranger.” His smile is tired, but he starts telling about his day before Shiro can ask him what he meant by that.

They meet often, and soon all Shiro ever thinks about is Keith.

Work becomes a blur; together with his time at home it’s just an annoying background noise to every single word Keith says and everything he does. Shiro realizes that Keith never looks calm and instead always seems restless. He’s a never-ending stream of impulses only contained under a limpid cloak of helplessness.

Keith never talks about his job or what he does; he talks about people instead.

He mentions them occasionally, if he talks at all about personal stuff, and it’s often full of regret—as if they are long gone from his life, or even worse, dead. The sadness and fatigue in his eyes when he speaks cling onto Shiro like a steady constant in his life; the wish to hug him all better is a desperate one. He holds himself back to not create any discomfort, keeping distance through panicked overthinking. Unlike him, Keith never cares about his own impulses to reach out and touch; until the first glimpse of casual ease is gone and turns into a visible expression of fear that it could be too much too fast for Shiro. When he notices it, Shiro quickly brushes over it as if nothing happened.

“Do you have family?” Shiro asks once and regrets it for days after. He wanted to know if Keith has a wife, kids, sisters or brothers. He is curious because Keith never talks about any of it. In the end, he should have known better than to ask.

“I did.”

Two words weighing more than a whole conversation. Shiro hastily changes the topic.

One evening, Shiro tries to remember his husband’s face, even though he just saw him that morning. He told Keith about him when he asked about Shiro’s life, about his parents, any memories about accidents or if he’s feeling healthy. The questions should feel invasive, but Shiro never feels like he shouldn’t answer – they trickle through little by little. Keith’s interest in those areas should be surprising to him, he thinks, but it isn’t. It’s more than clear that Keith has a goal, has an aim, wants to find something, wants to know more, wants to find out something. Shiro tells him whatever he wants to know about his husband and then never mentions him again, as if he never really existed.

\--------------------------------------- 

It has been raining for a week; Shiro ended work early, already reminiscing about what he’d done earlier today when Keith sits next to him on the bar stool, shaking off his wet jacket.

“Hey,” Shiro greets him, having accepted that meeting him here has become a happy staple in his life. His happiness is unmasked, eyes shining when he looks at him. Keith gives him an uncertain look back, shakes his hair a little. The image reminds Shiro of a wet dog shaking his fur until it’s dry. 

He doesn’t share the endearing thought.

A different atmosphere clings to the evening like a wet cloth. It starts with Keith ordering a beer, rubbing his face and letting out a long sigh, not beating around the bush when he directly starts his interrogation. “How is life?” he asks, then quickly adds, “I mean, _around here_.”

There has been no lack whatsoever in stories Shiro told about himself; Keith must know all of them by now. Still, he’s patient, rolls the question around in his head, hums in thought, taps his fingers on the table.

“Boring,” he finally says and laughs. “I’ve been here since I was 15 years old, joined the Garrison and never left for all those years, and now I’m even teaching there. I fly sometimes—”

Keith doesn’t wait for him to go into detail, interrupts him right there. “But… it’s good?” he asks warily. Shiro doesn’t know what’s it to him, but lifts his shoulders in a shrug for an answer.

“That’s relative, eh,” he jokes, still smiling. If he was honest, he would tell Keith how he became the single person he sees in this world, the single person he thinks about at night. Per social rules it would count as cheating, thinking of Keith more than he thinks of his husband. Shiro condemns it, condemns all the flings his co-workers or friends have had in the past that he heard about. But how can it be cheating when his husband doesn’t feel real the minute he gives him a tame kiss goodbye?

“Cheers.” With the raise of his own glass, Shiro grins again, cheeks feeling frozen in place by the way he fakes his smile. “It couldn’t be better,” he adds and puts a big fat cherry on top of his unnecessary lie.

Against all odds, there’s a genuine feeling behind that lie. Shiro can’t imagine a better life, because his imagination just doesn’t carry that far anymore.

He doesn’t miss the way Keith stays quiet and stares at his drink. When the purple eyes cast down on his hands, he sighs.

“Hey,” Shiro speaks softly, “is everything alright there, buddy?”

The tension creeps through his whole body, particularly sits between his shoulder blades. Shiro lifts his right hand to give him a reassuring squeeze, and Keith jolts back.

“Sorry, I’m…” he trails off, forcing himself to relax. “It’s good to hear you’re fine.”

_It’s good to have you back._

_It’s good to be back._

The two sentences echo hollow in the back of his head, meddle with his mind. “It’s good to be fine,” he says, completely by accident; he searches for Keith’s eyes to see if he notices how dazzled Shiro’s mind is, but there’s nothing, only fierce determination to be found in it.

“I’ll leave, Shiro.”

There’s a loud thunder outside, but the noise it makes arrives as a dull echo of itself,. Shiro wouldn’t even notice it if not for the lightning at the windows, illuminating the whole bar. The customers barely react, but Shiro’s heart races. 

_Keith is leaving_ , he thinks. _He will be gone._

His mouth runs dry and out of words to hold Keith back. Keith still sits there, idly, not making a move as if he himself is not ready to go yet, either. _It must be because of his family_ , Shiro thinks, mind running rapidly, clear as day, much clearer than it has ever been before. Keith probably wants to find something out about them. That’s it.

“Forever?” Shiro croaks, voice rough and lips so dry he almost follows up with a cough. “ _Keith_.” Shiro can’t feel embarrassed about how pleading he sounds.

The black-haired man looks up at him in surprise, mouth slightly opened. Shiro can’t look him in the eyes and looks at his hands instead, stares at the leather gloves before he closes his eyes, a painful thud right behind them before a memory trickles in. 

_A breeze, fresh air._

For a long time he’s never seen a picture as clear as that one, it burns in the back of his mind.

_Sunset. Heat._

_Dry_.

The thoughts that there’s something wrong, really wrong come tumbling in one after another, but Shiro just can’t figure out why. It’s almost as if he needs to pinch himself awake from a nightmare, but can’t even remember when he was able to dream for the last time.

The sudden wet air and the hiss of raindrops falling bring him back immediately.

His eyes snap open and search for the only open window at the bar, where the rain is pouring in and at the customer who sits right beneath it. He’s soaking wet, reading a soaked book, not remotely affected by himself staring at the unreadable letters.

It looks like a scene right out of a dream, Shiro thinks. With a frightening calmness, Shiro remarks, “Iit _never_ rained.” He keeps staring at the guy with the book. 

Too fast, it feels like a nightmare spiraling down on him, a nightmare he never can wake up from. Is he dreaming? Does he _ever_ dream, he wonders and feels his throat close up all of the sudden, frozen by the sudden realization of all the contradictions in his life.

“It never rained,” he repeats. “Not for that long.” Then a pause before he looks back to Keith. “ _We’re in the desert._ ”

Keith could reply with anything. He could laugh and shrug or shake his head and tell Shiro that he’s an idiot, that it has always rained in the desert, that he’s making a big deal out of it. Shiro really hopes he tells him that. Shiro could treat him to another beer and they could continue with what they’d usually talk about.

But Keith slowly rises up from the bar stool, mouth forming a small _‘oh’_.

Shiro’s chest tightens and he feels his breath hitch. “You know what’s going on, don’t you? Keith, something isn’t right—”

He leans forwards and holds Keith’s shoulders, then lets go of him as if he had burnt his hands. 

All kinds of memories flood his brain, they nag on his mind: Keith, younger, then older, Keith and him hugging. A window but the outside is a dark nothing and a few stars shining clear and bright…and a planet, right within sight. 

He’s been at the Garrison for years, but they’ve never been to space before. The technology, _it’s not that far yet_ —

Images of Keith, with short hair or long hair, _it’s always been Keith_ , his eyes glowing _yellow_ and his teeth forming fangs.

_Shiro_

_You’re my brother, I—_

“Shiro,” Keith says and Shiro snaps out of his memories in time to hear the storm raging outside.The buzzing hurts his ears. 

Then it all happens very fast. 

The bar crumbles under the pressure of the storm and the breeze blows in, roughing up Keith’s hair and playing forcefully with cups and wine glasses as if they were feathers, smashing them against the walls. The storm is so close and loud that Shiro can barely hear his own words, much less Keith’s. He sees him open his mouth, but it’s almost _too loud—_

“Do you trust me?!” Keith shouts against the rage of the storm and holds onto Shiro’s jacket, in his other hand a long sword forming out of seemingly nowhere.

Keith looks determined, angry. He’s feral – elegant. Horrifying and beautiful all at once. Shiro would put his life into Keith’s hands.

There’s no way he couldn’t trust him. Keith coming into his life felt like he discovered a thick dark veil hiding reality from him. Keith in that equation is like the night sky that’s hidden behind the veil, a starry sky that Shiro always looked at when he was young, alone and restless. 

They’ve known each other for only a few short months and yet it feels like Keith is the only thing he’s ever known, the only thing he cares about, the only person his mind is occupied with. Shiro’s thoughts circle around Keith every day and every hour like the Earth around the sun.

 _Trust_ is an understatement.

Shiro takes his hand. There’s not one reality where it would be any different. 

“I trust you,” he screams over the noise of the storm wrecking the roof above them. Keith grips his hand, knuckles white.

Only a second later, all customers disappear into thin air. There’s nothing else but them in the vast desert under the raging black sky, showering them in blinding darkness and piercing raindrops.

Shiro follows Keith’s gaze that leads to the sky above them, into the eye of the storm. Two yellow eyes appear in it, then a face forms out of the turmoil of air and sand.

_Found you,_ it growls.

The voice is dull and threatening and Shiro remembers so well that it has been a presence in his nightmares for years. A rush of desperation, anger, forlornness are all coming back to him. 

But the voice is not directed at Shiro, for now.

_I finally found you, Red Paladin,_ it screams.


	2. Between Realities

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Shiro,” Keith says calmly. His burnt hand reaches out, but he doesn’t dare touch him.
> 
> “What do you remember?”
> 
> The question is easy. The answer; even easier.
> 
> “Nothing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait!
> 
> For a potential trigger warning (spoiler) in this chapter, skip to the end notes!
> 
> This is a rather heavy/angsty chapter, but I promise after the third one it'll be a little lighter!<3 I'm happy to hear everyone's thoughts on this chapter. :]

_[[coverart](https://twitter.com/CruelisB/status/1245387992375742465?s=20) by me]_

It’s night-time when Shiro wakes.

He must have passed out and hurt himself when the storm hit. He remembers the eyes and the air ripping forcefully at his body, he remembers Keith shouting. But nothing more.

His limbs feel heavy and sore, and his head feels like he has three weeks of hangover pressed into one night.

There's a high-pitched, seemingly endless tone ringing in his right ear but it’s not the thing that makes Shiro open his eyes, albeit it _is_ very annoying. Instead, it’s the gentle soar of rolling waves to his feet and the feeling of a warm body right next to him that make him wonder where he is. His heart rate picks up immediately.

 _The ocean?_ Shiro thinks. The gentle soar gets louder. 

_I haven’t been there in years._

Next to him, the warm body is shifting; a sound of distress turns to mumbling which turns to regained slumber. Shiro’s eyes feel crusty when he opens them. With effort he tries to turn his blurry sight to a clear image. As soon as he’s able to make out the lump right next to him, his breath hitches. He’s happy that the surprised jerk of his body didn’t wake Keith, the big lump that lies on the ground right next to him.

Shiro bends his body towards the younger man, bends over to take a look at his face, and scans for a sign to see if he’s awake. Keith doesn’t take notice and continues to idly sleep in his arms. His brows are pinched, and his soft lips with a slight purplish tint are curved downwards.

 _Relaxed_ , Shiro figures. Not unhappy _._

As he stares down at the smaller but nonetheless strong frame, there’s one thought that strikes in Shiro’s head.

“You look cute,” he mumbles with an effort to not speak loud enough that Keith could actually hear him. It doesn’t matter. Keith doesn’t react. His breath is even, his face wearing a cute frown. He’s so warm, Shiro thinks.

“You look nothing like anything I know.”

Keith stays still, so Shiro takes his time examining him.

His features are feminine despite the strong jaw and high cheekbones, his eyelashes long and thick and they carry the same mesmerizing color of a void orbit. His lips look kissable, slightly pursed during his deep slumber, and Shiro catches himself wondering what they taste like, and if he should simply lean down in order to find out.

A cold splatter of water tickles his feet and brings him back to his current plight. The waves are coming closer. They need to move soon if they don’t want all of their clothes to soak wet and for them to get freezed to the bone.

Now that Shiro is able to break his gaze away from Keith’s face, he raises his head to look around. The missing heat was the first hint for him to realize that they aren’t where they are supposed to be. Another look around tells him that instead of lying in the middle of the desert near the Garrison faculty, they are in another empty space with small hills of dry dirt but there are no streets, lights, or buildings.

It’s entirely different; the dirt is darker, muddier and the weather is cold. And of course, _the_ _ocean_.

With the sound of another wave rolling to the shore, Shiro remembers.

The cracking, the thunder, the voice. The too familiar shudder of a memory trying to breach the surface of Shiro’s mind and force him to f i n a l l y remember still harshly throbs in his head. Shiro raises his arm to press a hand against it. He doesn’t come as far.

It’s the right arm he wants to raise, the one Keith is sleeping nuzzled against. Shiro is about to whisper an apology for his sudden movement and for almost waking him, if it wasn’t for the big bulky white mechanic hand coming into sight where usually his right arm would be.

Shiro eyes widen at the sight of the floating arm and he wants to push away but the hand moves with him. It takes too long for him to make the connection that it must be _his_ very own hand, _his_ arm that Keith is hogging. 

His eyes snap to his shoulder, where it connects to a white, glowing shoulder port that wasn’t there before the storm hit. That’s where Keith must have been looking all the time, Shiro thinks, cold shudders running down his spine. That’s why Keith was so confused to see a human arm before, when in reality, Shiro’s right arm must have been _gone_ the whole time.

Keith opens his eyes at the exact same moment when Shiro’s breathing becomes rapid and uncontrolled, spiraling into the well-known beginnings of a panic attack. Shiro doesn’t realize he’s shouting before Keith sits up next to him and holds the _cursed_ _thing_ still.

“Shiro!” he yells and presses the arm into the sand – it’s sizzling and buzzing, pushing against the restraints, curling fingers and palm at the same time. The intensifying heat quickly crawls through the shoulder port into Shiro’s chest, resulting in shallow breaths and even jerkier movements.

“Shiro, you’re okay, don’t…calm down, please—” Keith looks desperate, the heat from the arm is searing into his flesh, leaving a nasty red mark on his skin. With wide eyes Shiro grasps for Keith’s arm that holds his and kicks the mechanical one away.

Two meters away in the sand, it’s buzzing again, giving off a low beep before it turns off.

“What was that?” Shiro demands, willing his quick breath to slow down. Controlling his breathing helps, and even though he doesn’t ever remember learning the method, it feels like a second nature to him. He’s searching in Keith’s eyes for an answer, but can’t find the same sentiment in Keith’s eyes. He’s not surprised about the arm at all. He also doesn’t ask Shiro why he has it.

Something feels wrong, very wrong and the panic about the unknown settles deep onShiro’s skin, making him alert like a wild animal.

“Shiro,” Keith says calmly. His burnt hand reaches out, but he doesn’t dare touch him.

“What do you remember?”

The question is easy. The answer; even easier.

“ _Nothing_.”

“Your husband?” Keith asks. His voice is breaking a little at the end and he rubs his face. “Do you remember?”

“I—” Shiro pauses. Yes, he remembers. A memory of a nameless, faceless person that was somehow there, but never really. There’s a hesitation before he asks.

“I should, shouldn’t I?”

Keith shivers, the way he quietly casts his eyes to the ground is telling Shiro all he needs to know.

“Are you sad?” Keith asks him with the same firmness as before and Shiro replies without hesitation this time.

“No.” He’s breathless, feeling Keith’s eyes pierce through him. “I’m not.” The air blows around them, taking a few grains of dirt, swiveling them around. 

Keith looks at him for a few more seconds, this time weary and worn. He lets out a sigh of relief.

“Good,” Keith replies, rubs the dirt out of his eyes and face. As he looks down at the new burning scar that Shiro gave him, he winces. He doesn’t look back at Shiro when he says, “I don’t think he ever existed.”

The water rushes between them, bubbling at their ankles. The new information crawls like an itch through Shiro’s body, like a worm wandering from toe to head, trying to creep out of his mouth. His stomach turns, but he doesn’t vomit, even though it’s a close thing. The information might be new to him, but in hindsight, it’s not surprising at all.

They stay in silence and both sit in the grainy dirt. Keith doesn’t talk for a while and keeps rubbing his face. It’s not nearly enough time for Shiro to collect his mind in silence and rebound from the situation, but he tries anyway. “Did anything I saw ever existed?” he asks, voice not as tentative as before. Keith takes his hands away from his face and lets them fall to his side. He doesn’t meet Shiro’s gaze.

“I don’t know,” he says. 

“That’s not comforting to hear at all.” Too late Shiro notices that it’s an unnecessary remark said too harshly. Keith’s face falls even more.

“Sorry.”

“No,” Shiro breathes with a guilty look at the altean arm first, then at Keith. “I am.”

The new scar on Keith’s arm is still pulsing red, but for now he doesn’t seem to notice. He stands; Shiro scrambles up next to him. 

The arm that lies a few feet away in the sand quietly comes to life again, but this time, the light is empty and cold, lacking the aggressive red from earlier. It levitates, hovers in the air on its spot, before it flies back to Shiro’s side. Shiro watches the fingers of the arm tighten and uncurl, producing every movement of every impulsive thought Shiro harbors in his mind.

He still stares at his closed fist. “I lost my arm,” he realizes out loud, voice void of emotion. When he looks up, Keith’s look is unreadable. Shiro sighs.

“Will you explain _anything_ to me?” The question slips from his mouth while he still watches the mechanical arm bend. He wonders if he’s better off _not_ knowing. Maybe Keith thinks the same way.

Keith bites his lip and turns away. “I will,” Keith says and picks up a piece of wood, a small wet branch, looking forlornly at it before he throws it without strength a meter away from him and waits. Keith stares at the spot where the branch lies, as if anything could appear right in that moment. Shiro observes it too and they stand there, waiting what feels like hours, for someone or _something_ to appear. Nothing happens.

Keith snaps his gaze away and looks at the ground right under his eyes, then at the faraway line of the horizon, dividing the ocean and sky. Then Keith’s eyes cast down to follow the sound of Shiro’s shoes digging into the sand. He takes a steadying breath.

“But first,” he starts and pauses. His voice is rough around the edges, lost like the voice of a child left behind. Keith clears his throat, and when he lifts his eyes at Shiro again, the softness is gone and only sadness mixes with the determined look of a war-torn soldier. 

“First, we have to figure out where we are.”

_____________________

They walk for miles in the empty nothingness.

There are no mountains, no grass, no trees. Soon there’ll leave the ocean behind too.

The world feels still, so motionless, so empty; there’s no sun or moon, and as they walk through the night, Shiro looks up to let the stars guide him. He wants to find the constellations he knows since he was still young, but he finds nothing. Not even a single one.

“We’re not on Earth,” he states. Keith gives a short nod. So he already knew.

There are other things Shiro says, other things he remarks that come to his mind.Keith only gives sharp nods or hums but never replies. Shiro realizes that everything that leaves him wondering is something Keith has already seen. He’s the only guide Shiro has and without him he will be helpless in this cloaked world.

“We need to keep moving,” is the only thing Keith says after a while. “I don’t know what saved us.”

Shiro nods in return. He has many questions, and the more he keeps thinking, the more they pile up. Why was Keith the only real person in his life? What happened to all the others? Was it all a dream? But how come Keith is there, now? Is he still dreaming?

There were some things in his life that were real, Shiro thinks. Pain, feeling, touching, smelling. But more often than not it felt like there was missing a piece of an already washed-out puzzle, and he only got to taste the dull version of a fake reality. Even though he remembers some things, he can’t really say which was real and which was not. He wonders if Keith knows, but it feels like too much to ask Keith to explain Shiro’s whole life to him.

“I don’t know how my life would have turned out if you hadn’t appeared in it,” Shiro says instead, deep in his thoughts, because that feeling is genuine. It’s real.

Keith’s snort is self-deprecating. “Yeah. Thanks to me you’re out of the best life-long fantasy you ever had.” He looks up at the purplish-grey sky. “Thanks to me we’ll probably end up dead on this planet; if not for starving, then for dying of thirst.” Keith smacks his lips. “You’re welcome.”

Even though Keith says it dryly, Shiro barks a laughter. Their exchange feels oddly familiar. But Keith doesn’t laugh with him, his smile is bitter.

“Back then,” Keith takes a deep sigh, “you told me you were fine.” His voice is breaking at the end. “You were _happy_.”

Shiro tries to see the joke in Keith’s words, tries to understand where Keith could genuinely mean or think that it was true. Meeting Keith was the only thing that stopped him from getting crazy at some point. A mere _stranger_ at that time made his life more life-worthy than his actual — _or imagined_ — husband.

“The scar,” Keith continues, his voice painful. He doesn’t stop walking. “The arm. They are both…” Keith bites his lip, then pauses, both in his steps and his words. He looks over his shoulder, searching Shiro’s eyes. When Keith finds them, he holds the gaze for a few seconds. “Before, they weren’t...”

Shiro feels so bare under his look. He doesn’t dare move or speak, just stays in place and holds his gaze while he waits for Keith to continue. 

But then Keith’s gaze shifts down and he says nothing more. He frowns, his eyebrows furrow and his lips are tensely pressed into a thin line, before he starts biting on them. 

Shiro still waits for something. He doesn’t know enough about Keith to say the right words or understand what’s going on inside of him. He only knows that he feels grateful for what Keith has done for him so far. The thought of being apart from him hurts, and Shiro doesn’t even know _why_.

The gulp of Keith swallowing is loud and coarse and it’s no wonder it’s audible. His throat is dry; they haven’t had water for hours. Keith’s eyes are fixed at Shiro’s white arm with a nerve-wracking intensity. He opens his mouth and closes it again, shakes his head.

“Let’s move on,” he suggests instead, turns and picks up his pace where he left it before.

Shiro stays behind for a moment and looks at Keith’s strong back and his lonely figure under the sunless sky.

“The arm,” Shiro says to himself as an afterthought, the words sounding hollow. His eyes shift from the sky to the arm and eye it warily for a few moments, waiting for it to do something unusual again. But the arm keeps humming steadily at his side with no signs of malfunction, so Shiro takes a deep sigh and hurries after Keith.

**_____________________**

Another few hours pass and Shiro’s lost in his own thoughts. They come and go, but don’t usually form a single coherent trail, as if all of his memory has been wiped out. There are a few that cling to him no matter how much he has forgotten; some from his childhood, of warm, orange summer days and the smell of fresh cut grass in the air. Then endless days of white walls and cold blue, with mixed sharp smells that burn in his nose. White curtains, but no sun coming through. After that, everything’s a blur. There’s the Garrison, but not much more he can remember.

Walking becomes a perfunctory task and he doesn’t give it much thought. A dull headache that is still lingering in the back of his mind for a while now becomes stronger and occupies the bigger part of his attention. He trails behind Keith for some time, his eyes on the ground and his moving feet. Admittedly, they could be running in circles the whole time and he wouldn’t notice. When he looks up again he realizes that Keith probably wouldn’t either; they walked for hours but everything’s still the same unchanged scenery.

The sky above them is an unchanged purplish grey without clouds or celestial bodies visible, but it’s expressive on its own - a creme curl of dull colors Shiro has never seen while gazing at the sky before. The sight of Keith’s back is a sharp contrast against the sky, dark and sharp for that matter. Shiro watches his slim frame move relentlessly and can’t ignore the thing that has been on his mind since he woke up anymore. He quickens his steps and catches up with Keith. 

“You knew me,” Shiro says. He didn’t expect his voice to sound so coarse. 

Keith’s eyes flicker to him and he brushes his hair out of his face. Shiro can read the hesitation in his eyes. “I knew you.”

The whole time, every time Shiro saw him in the bar, he must have known Shiro already. And when they introduced each other, as well. When Shiro told about his life, Keith probably knew about it better than he did. 

Shiro’s heart-rate picks up and the headache worsens for a second. He’s getting ahead of himself. “How well?” he asks.

Keith’s step slows and he pauses, assessing their surroundings. "We were friends." The ocean is almost invisible at the horizon, a tiny speck on the sky. There’s a small dry bush next to Keith’s feet, but he gives it no attention before he moves on.

Shiro stops him short. 

“We should think about food.” His stomach growls in time, and Shiro looks at the pitiful plant to his feet. 

He doesn’t wait for Keith to turn back before he crouches down to dig for a root under the almost rotten plant. In the corner of his eyes, Keith’s feet step right next to him, while he pushes through the ground and keeps digging.

When he can get a hold of the root, he already feels that there is nothing on it. It’s too dry, scraggy and gnarled. He still pulls it out of the ground and takes a good look at it. It’s tiny and looks like nothing a human mouth should eat.

He wipes away the dirt and looks up at Keith who has been watching him quietly for a while, with his arms folded on his chest. 

“Bon Appetit,” Shiro says with one eyebrow raised and the root held out towards Keith. The action draws a tired smile from Keith. He lingers for a moment, then turns without a word and starts walking again. 

Shiro sighs and looks down at the root before he follows him on his steps.

_____________________

“I think the days move slower here,” Shiro comments as they sit down after another long walk. When the sun sets, it feels like they have walked two days instead of one. Shiro’s lips are chapped and his throat feels like a raisin. Keith admits the same. It’s no wonder they’re tired since they’ve been constantly moving without food or water, which is why they decided to talk only when needed.

There are a thousand things Shiro can’t figure out, and are still lingering after the initial shock. It had been rough to see everything he held for real once to crumble down in front of his own eyes.

There must be an explanation for his defective memory and for the feeling of Keith being so familiar to him. Shiro desperately clinging to explanations for the universe to start making sense again. 

He needs the answers, but doesn’t ask Keith what is almost on the tip of his tongue only to keep them both from exhausting themselves, and more so to keep himself a little saner, too. He doesn’t know what would keep him going if he finds out that Keith has no answers to his questions.

At a loss for what to do with himself, Shiro buries his fingers into the ground. His nails are already dirty from digging earlier, and he’s in desperate need to do something that keeps him grounded. 

Opposite to him, Keith sits legs crossed, hands on his thighs. His eyes look tired, hair a wild tousle hanging everywhere. The tips softly dance in the air through the gentle breeze passing them. His lips look like a deep-red heart, flush and wet from the blood that started to break through the thin dry skin, maybe half an hour ago. Thin trails of blood slowly ran down from the curve of his mouth into the corners. It’s not drying out. From time to time he rubs or licks at it and instantly regrets it. His mouth must feel on fire.

They sit there in silence for a while, with no moon under the vast sky. With the last glimpse of sun every light disappeared in this empty, wide universe. 

“Sleep,” Shiro mouths, voice barely audible, but it’s so quiet around them that it still feels loud. It’s a suggestion. Keith nods, then turns away from him. Shiro glances up from the grey lump in the darkness to the white arm right in front of him. He still suspects it could go mad any second, but so far, nothing happened.

Shiro gets settled right behind Keith’s back, one hand resting right next to Keith’s body on the ground. Shiro observes Keith’s tense back. A second later Keith turns around to him. His purple eyes with the thick eyebrows above look at Shiro with mild astonishment.

“Cold,” Shiro explains, determined to use as few words as possible. He doubts that the night will just stay the same medium temperature and instead, will cool down a little. Staying close to each other will benefit them both.

Keith’s eyes are still on him. Shiro thinks he’s reading wariness, confusion in his face, but then Keith slowly nods and turns again. The small of his back relaxes again and Shiro shuffles closer.

As Keith falls asleep quickly, Shiro stares up at the cloudless sky wide awake. He reminisces about all the constellations that are nowhere to be seen, and wonders if Keith heard of them, or if he has seen them before. Maybe, and the thought evokes a tight feeling in Shiro’s chest, they’ve never existed in the first place. He wonders if Keith knows about all the things that exist and do not exist, about what it is an illusion and what is real in Shiro’s head. He listens to the soft breathing of that smaller man next to him and wonders, if he has really fallen asleep that quickly.

Soon, Shiro’s eyes tire too. Right before he closes them, he wonders why he trusts Keith and what he was to him, and most important of all, why he can’t remember any of it.

  
  


The night is rough, the sky is empty, the ground is cold, Shiro’s mind is a mess.

He tosses and turns throughout, knowing well that he’s dreaming. But the dreams are _too_ real.

_“Shiro. Shiro, it’s a nightmare. Listen to me, you’re here. I’m here.”_

_“The Black Lion,” Shiro hears his own voice sob, “I dreamt she’s captured me again…”_

“ _Shiro_ ,” the voice sounds closer, and realer. There’s warmth and comfort, too. “I will never let anything happen to you again,” the voice says again.

In a daze, Shiro realizes that Keith must have turned around to hold him, rocking Shiro and brushing the sweat plastered fringe out of his face. Having Keith close, so close, is unusual and Shiro shifts in his loose grip while Keith keeps holding and soothing him. Gradually, Shiro relaxes and takes steadying breaths — short and low, as if they are an exercise since long ingrained into his body — and flops back against Keith’s chest.

He doesn’t say anything for a while and continues to steadily breathe. In and out. Keith holds him a little closer and the usual distance between them is suddenly gone.

“She won’t get you,” Keith mutters into his hair, voice so small.

“Who?” Shiro asks, surprised.

Keith blinks down at him, looking as surprised as Shiro, now that Keith knows he’s awake. In the darkness, his face is almost invisible, but his eyes are white and defined.

Keith’s voice is soft when he speaks. “The Witch,” he says, then a little hesitant. “ _Or_ Black. Even though she… the Black Lion didn’t mean to hurt you. I won’t let that ever happen again.”

“A lion?” Shiro slowly sits up, already missing the touch when Keith creates some distance and shifts away.

“You don’t remember,” Keith says, but this time he’s not desperate, he’s not sad. He looks and sounds neutral, even though tired. “She’s a spaceship.” The words come slowly. “You piloted her. I did, too. You…”

When Keith stops speaking, Shiro’s raising an eyebrow. “I…what?”

Keith bites his lip, shakes his head. “You… we had friends. They all had a Lion.” He swallows. Then, “we were a team.”

A sudden breeze tousles through Keith’s hair. He starts shivering, and Shiro shuffles back to him as a reflex. 

“Is it okay—?” Shiro asks and waits for the confirmation in the shape of a hesitant nod that Keith gives him. They hug in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of hopelessness, together alone.

It seems so obvious now. Shiro remembers all the talks about family, but Keith never once mentioned his parents. He was talking about his _team_. “You want to find them,” Shiro states.

Keith doesn’t nod. “If they aren’t dead.”

“I was one of them.” 

According to Keith, Shiro was a pilot, too. He flew a lion...ship. The Black Lion, he summarizes in his head. “And I’m not dead, am I?” he says with a confident smile on his lips. If _he_ didn’t die, the others must be _somewhere_ , too. 

“Right,” Keith says, strangled. It doesn’t sound hopeful.

The cold creeps up their legs, the wind blows stronger, and the dry dirt from lashes violently through the air. There’s no time to bathe in sadness, not even for Keith, who must have lived for months with the knowledge that Shiro only learns now. Keith must have remembered him, must have remembered others. Shiro doesn’t even know how long Keith didn’t know that he was still alive.

They don’t know what hour it is, if it’s still night or day again. The storm clouds the sky with dirt, hides the sky behind darkness, turns clean air into a whirl of sand.

Keith pushes out of their loose embrace, protects his eyes from the sand as he gets up. “Let’s get moving,” he suggests. His jaw is set hard, his eyes are pained, but his expression tells Shiro that they need to soldier on, like Keith had all along. 

_____________________

Shiro’s guess is that they’ve been on their way for three to four days, but there’s no way to tell. Since they woke up on this planet, they hadn’t had any food or water, and the chances that it’ll change are slim. The sky turns a starry blur, cold and unrelentless. Words don’t leave either of them, and the bit of hope they had before is nowhere to be found. Shiro watches Keith’s strong back while he steadily marches on, stepping forward despite being certain that death will put its bony fingers around their throats soon. 

Shiro knows it. 

As if he _didn’t_ know what that felt like.

The end is near, when the thirst gets unbearable.

They have a couple of anxious and keyed-up hours where they start talking about everything and nothing with neither of them remembering the sentences they just started or finished. They both stopped reacting to things the other said, no matter how much either of them try to focus. They shout answers to questions neither of them asked against the darkening clouds and the loud wind. They try to make sense of it, until they simply start laughing about the tornado in the distance, about it’s quickening pace and threatening madness.

That’s until the hallucinations set in.

They are still walking, as if anything could be found anytime soon. Shiro long accepted the fact that there’s nothing but the two of them alone and freezing. “We are going to die,” Shiro states. It feels best to be prepared. 

Keith nods, even though the words don’t really get to him. His eyes are a purple blur without any life in it. They do light up when he stares into the distance too long. “Do you see that person there, too?” He squints.

“No,” Shiro says a meter behind him, and looks too. There’s nobody there. “Keith, _listen_ . We _are_ going to die. We need to do _something—_ ” Something, anything, even though it’s a dead end—

“I know!” Keith shouts angrily. “I know! _Everyone_ left us, Shiro, everyone left _me—_ ” His voice is agitated and restless and he throws his hands up when he turns back to Shiro. “I can’t save you,” he sobs. “ _She won_ , she got us apart and just…”

“Keith,” Shiro breathes. He reaches for Keith who looks like a caged animal, reaches for his hands to slowly bring them down again.

Keith lets him, and they stand like this, with Shiro’s hands wrapped around his wrists. Shiro’s mind circles around many things, about the inevitability of death, about his own throbbing headache, but it circles in on the warmth of contact between Keith’s skin and his own. 

_It’s_ _real_. It’s there. It’s the only thing that counts. If Shiro’s throat wasn’t already dry, it would be now.

He helplessly watches how Keith’s head drops and sinks between his shoulders. Straw-like strands of black hair, unkempt and unwashed for days now, fall into his face. Keith’s calmness feels frightening all of the sudden. But he seems to gather his thoughts, his lips part softly, he coughs, then swallows. 

“I will bring us out. Believe me, I won’t let you die.”

Shiro just nods. He’s too tired to believe it.

Keith raises his head again, tired eyes framing Shiro with an unexpected focus, taking him in, as if for one last time. For a moment, it feels like Keith’s confidence and trust are back, but then he startles and looks to their right. Shiro follows his gaze as Keith seems to see something that isn’t there. His fingers dig into Shiro’s arms, harshly, and his eyes widen. 

“He’s here!” Keith screams. “He ...he died, but he came back—” He draws back, takes a few steps backwards until he turns and starts running. Shiro still doesn’t see anything but the greyish desert, but charges after Keith.

They don’t run for long. Keith tumbles over his own slurring step and falls to the ground, into the dirt and just lays there.

Shiro feels tired, so... so tired. With his last strength he braces himself as he falls to the ground right next to him. “ _Keith_ ,” he says. “There’s no one there.”

The burdening fatigue that lets Shiro’s eyes fall shut comes without warning, just as the drowsiness that lays itself heavy over his body. 

He doesn’t know the feeling of a failing body, he _remembers_ it.

Faint memories of a broken body flood his mind; all on it's own. “I’m sorry, Keith,” Shiro says. He’s acutely aware of his slowing heartbeat, of the slowing world, of their dying bodies and the death of his last glimmer of hope.

“The human body isn’t made to endure more than 7 days without water,” he explains then. Simple as math. He shouldn’t be so calm, shouldn’t be so indifferent, but all of his life he must have prepared for this moment. “First thing I learned in Iverson’s _Rescue missions_ class at the Garrison,” he goes on and doesn’t understand why he’s still talking. “We’re going to die.” It’s a fact. As simple as life and death. “The organs… they will first—“

“Shiro,” Keith sobs. Shiro nods and holds out his hands for him to take it. “I’m here,” he mouths, throat too dry to continue. It’s enough for now.

“Shiro, I need to tell you—“

There’s so much Shiro doesn’t know yet, doesn’t know about Keith. How did he find Shiro? Why did they end up here? Where are the others?

But Shiro barely hears anything anymore. There’s a painful harsh throb in the back of his head, marking the beginning of a heavy headache. The last thing he sees is Keith’s crying face. Somewhere in his twisted mind he thinks if this is his last view, it’s at least a beautiful one.

He holds onto Keith with his last bit of strength, with a last bit of hope that something, someone is out there and will help them. But Shiro knows death is inevitable, just as pain and life is. Just like there are good things, there are bad things, too. And vice versa. He had thought it through all before, even though he barely remembers why.

Shiro has learned to take, to give, to accept faith. He learned to push all the limits because in the end, it was always paying off. He never learned what to do when it’s not.

Darkness consumes him as soon as he closes his eyes. He feels Keith’s cold body pressed next to him, tries to reach for it, hold it closer, but it slips from his mind.

Suddenly, the calmness of knowing what’s about to come is gone, a poisoned violet light is breaking through, taking that last peace from him. His head hurts but he’s too exhausted to feel it, he shivers before he hears it; the air is crackling with light and toxic energy—

_Found you._

Shiro gasps. Oxygen fills his lungs at once, but it feels like he’s suffocating at the same time. Keith next to him is quiet. _Too_ quiet.

_You’ll die for certain, Paladins. And so easily, this time—_

Then there’s a high-pitched voice, a shriek, a low growl. Then there’s the feeling of heaviness being lifted off him and suddenly, the darkness encloses them again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From "That’s until the hallucinations set in." a scene starts where there's a description of almost dying of thirst. It's nothing heavily explicit, but in case angsty near death scenes are potential triggering to you, I wanted you to know!


	3. New Ends, old beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“After we win the war, you mean.” The_ _man sounds cocky, full of fake confidence. Shiro slowly gains awareness that it’s in fact Keith who he’s talking to. A hazy memory._  
>  _“Right,” Shiro says. “It’s a long way until then but—”  
> _ _  
> “But that’s not what you wanted to talk about,” Keith finishes for him, voice playfully. Shiro thinks it might be even teasing.  
> _ __  
> “No,” Shiro smiles and takes a step towards him. His gaze drops to his own hand that curls around Keith’s slimmer one.  
>  __  
> “I know there are many other things we need to focus on, Keith, but I’ve been wondering…”  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mind the tags!  
>   
> Thanks @[DWImpala67](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DWImpala67) for beta-ing.<333
> 
> This is a pretty short chapter & after it we're gonna get to the bottom of things!
> 
> 100% Check out [THIS BEAUTIFUL ART BY KACZSIA](https://twitter.com/CruelisB/status/1362077293238226944?s=20)

_“You wanted to talk?” There’s the familiar stance, the arms folded in front of his slim but muscular body. Shiro suddenly feels shy, but he has been noticing it,_ _noticed and danced around it for months, and didn’t know how to address it. He’s sure, he’s not imagining things._

_“Yeah,” Shiro admits, hearing the smile in his own voice. The other man’s lips curve up as he leans against the control panel in the room. The air is familiar around them, nothing new, but still, they both just don’t know how to take the next step. How to take the leap._

_“I was wondering,” Shiro hears himself say, “what your plans are, after—” He takes a long pause, “all of this.”_

_“After we win the war, you mean.” The_ _man sounds cocky, full of fake confidence. Shiro slowly gains awareness that it’s in fact Keith who he’s talking to. In a hazy memory._

_“Right,” Shiro says. “It’s a long way until then but—”_

_“But that’s not what you wanted to talk about,” Keith finishes for him, voice playfully. Shiro thinks it might be even teasing._

_“No,” Shiro smiles and takes a step towards him. His gaze drops to his own hand that curls around Keith’s slimmer one._

_“I know there are many other things we need to focus on, Keith, but I’ve been wondering…”_

Shiro wakes in the moment his body hits cold water. He’s sinking like a stone and makes the mistake to gasp for air; water fills his lungs and he struggles to come up again. But when he reaches the surface and breaks through, coughs and struggles to breathe, it hits him. He’s still alive. The headache is gone.

Without thinking, Shiro regains his balance by moving his arms and paddle his feet in what seems like a lake at first glance and which remains a lake even at the second one. He takes another couple of moments to feel certain that the glowing eyes from before have disappeared. Rest assured, he closes his eyes and opens his mouth to drink, to drink, _to finally drink_ , to let the water fill his stomach until he feels _sick_.

Someone takes a sharp breath right next to Shiro. He almost doesn’t hear it, too focused on his body screaming for the water he yearned for earlier. He stops drinking and listens to the needy swallows and a relieved but exhausted sigh as a follow up.

Shiro opens his eyes with one last bit of hope and sees Keith swim right next to him, wet hair sticking to his forehead and neck.

“Fuck,” Shiro curses without meaning to. He’s overwhelmed. Happy. _Alive_. “Fuck—” They both are.

“We made it,” Keith whines, paddling through the water like a wet dog. “I don’t know _how_ _the fuck_ we got out there but... we made it, Shiro.”

Shiro nods, throat closing. He sobs out a laugh, drifts closer to Keith. His eyes are wet, lids heavy. He only notices now how tired he is.

They float in the water for a few more minutes, drinking and washing themselves before they gather their remaining strength to swim to the shore.

“Looks like we’re in the middle of a forest,” Shiro says quietly as they crawl to the solid ground.

They take a few minutes where they lie at the shore, with the stars twinkling above them. Keith closes his eyes, but he’s still breathing. 

Shiro feels relief wash over him, but it’s barely noticeable among the wild tumble of thoughts that run through his mind. He’s glad they are both alive and holds onto that feeling first.

Keith groans and slowly sits up, as does Shiro. The cold wet ground is anything but comfortable.

“Any idea what happened?” Shiro is the first to address the question of what wanted to kill them again. 

It’s good that they are safe for now, but they shouldn’t let their guard down. Shiro crawls a little closer. Even in the darkness he can make out Keith’s pale face and slightly hollowed cheeks. 

“It was over before…” _she could kill us,_ Shiro doesn’t say and tries to make sense of it. “This time, too.”

Keith shakes his head and wrings out the long strands of hair bit by bit. Shiro watches the way Keith’s chest is heaving and his slim fingers work. It’s captivating.

Shiro breaks his gaze off and drops back into the wet ground where a few strands of drier grass tickles his skin. He stays like that for a while until his mind and body calms, and the exhaustion of the past few days finally shudders through his bones. Thankfully, a slight warmth flows back into his body too.

For a few minutes they don’t talk; Keith is still wringing the water out of his hair as they both rest. They take deep, exasperated breaths, and inhale the highly reactive nonmetal of _feeling alive_.

“It was the _Witch._ Again,” Keith says after a while. His stomach growls loud enough for Shiro to hear, but he doesn’t let it disrupt him. “ _I_ _think_.” Another pause. _If it wasn’t another hallucination_ , he doesn’t say.

Shiro nods. The Witch. _The_ _voice_.

Keith fiddles with his hair, hesitates before he speaks. “Zarkon.” The word sounds heavy on his tongue. Keith pauses again, then clears his throat. “A… _man_. He wasn’t there, right?”

Shiro shakes his head. “No.” 

Keith wipes over his face, rubs his eyes. 

“The first time the Witch… She disappeared again by herself…?” Keith sounds as puzzled as Shiro feels. Then his face clears up. “But this time someone…” A knowing smile appears on his face and he throws a look around. “Someone helped us to get out. This planet, or reality. It’s something new.”

Shiro furrows his brows.

Before Keith can continue his thought, they are both startled by a whimper, followed by a low growl. Keith is up on his legs before Shiro can ask him if he heard it too.

Keith walks away, but his eyes quickly find the source. He falls to his knees a few meters further. “No.”

Shiro cranes his neck, then stands on wobbly legs and follows him. Keith sits on the ground again, next to him a huge dark lump. 

It takes a few moments for Shiro to understand that it’s a giant black wolf who’s lying there, eyes closed and not moving.

“Not you too.” When Keith’s hand buries in his fur, the wolf slowly opens his eyes. Both his fur and his eyes have an otherworldly sparkle to it, a soft shimmer that slowly weakens. Keith moves closer to the wolf, fur clutched in his hand while he sobs, tears running over his face in streams. Shiro just stares, unable to move.

The animal is hurt. Shiro doesn’t know _how_ and why. He only sees Keith devastated and that’s enough for him to worry, too.

Keith sits at it’s side, hand buried in the fur. “I’m so sorry. Kosmo. Please,” Keith begs, “please stay. Please. _Please_ , I need you.”

Shiro drops down to sit next to them both. “What can we do?” he asks, ignoring the stab in his heart.

Keith shuffles to the side to expose the deep wound in the stomach area of the animal. Shiro takes in a deep breath, then moves to take off his shirt and press next to the wound to stop it from bleeding. 

“Please,” Keith whimpers next to him, rocking back and forth. “Not him, too,” he says again. Shiro would do anything to help, but they don’t have medication and they are stranded in the woods. The animal’s breath is slowing down. It looks worn and ragged just like them. Other than him or Keith, it has a gaping wound as a deadly addition.

It’s the first time that Shiro notices Keith giving up: He’s not in a hurry, not trying to make a plan or find something that helps. Keith knows it’s the end for the animal, and somehow that makes it even more devastating.

Shiro leans closer, and when the wolf looks at him without a sign of fear, he starts petting him. The wolf closes his eyes again and sighs out a soft breath.

Slowly, the wolf dies under their hands. Shiro feels the breath weakening, the heartbeat racing, the body getting cold. He doesn’t stop petting him until it’s over.

“Keith,” Shiro says softly. 

“He helped us, he _doesn’t deserve_ this _—_ ” The disbelief is written in his face. He hides it in the wolf’s fur. Although the wolf is dead, Keith is unable to let go.

Shiro doesn’t care that in theory he doesn’t really know Keith. He doesn’t care that they are both still in danger. He stares at the back of Keith’s head and gives a promise to himself. 

From now on, he will _always_ try to protect Keith.

It doesn’t matter if Shiro ever remembers him, or not. Keith has suffered too much in his life and he doesn’t deserve that either. Shiro wants to protect him from anything else that could happen.

Shiro reaches for Keith’s hand because quiet support is all that he can give now. Keith lets him. When Shiro squeezes Keith’s hand he briefly thinks that, _indeed_ , it feels small.

It takes some time until Keith lets go off the wolf’s body. He looks back at Shiro with all kinds of emotions in his face, Hopelessness the saddest of them all. Shiro knows, there are no words that make the death of a friend any better and silently looks back at him. _I’m here for you_ , he thinks. And hopes Keith knows.

A sudden white sprinkle of light catches their attention and they both look down again. 

The body starts flickering in front of their eyes and dissolves into a thousand particles of stardust. They glimmer and levitate to the ground, lighter and slower than feathers would, making cruel death a bittersweet and beautiful spectacle.

Shiro continues holding Keith’s hand even though Keith’s fingernails pierce so hard through the flesh of Shiro’s palm that he’s sure it will draw blood from him. But Shiro won’t let go.

As the stardust falls, the sudden darkness engulfs them completely. As the clouds draw by at a leisurely pace, marking their endless cycle around the earth, the warm light the stars and moon break through and reflects on new glittering particles. And with the old dying, something new begins.

Shiro would believe it’s a dream, too, when the singing light of a shooting star drops from the sky and crashes right into the heap of dust in front of them, spraying it everywhere. Shiro starts coughing while Keith does a double take as a young pup crawls from the spectacle of light and particles into his arms.

“Is he—” Shiro says but doesn’t finish his sentence. He has trouble processing it all. 

The clouds above them pass by through a sudden strong breeze, and the moon and stars are visible again.

Keith’s eyes shine in their light. He nods, a glimmer of hope creeping to his face. 

“He’s back,” Keith whispers and squeezes the glowing baby wolf to his body. Shiro can’t stop himself from smiling widely. He places a hand between Keith’s shoulder blades and looks down at the dazed pup.

“Kosmo,” Keith sobs, his eyes watering again. He pushes his face into the scrawny fur and nuzzles into it. The gleeful pup howls at the round and shining moon before he happily starts gnawing on Keith’s hair in return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pls dont hurt me, im just a mere angster


	4. Law of Motion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the new planet, Keith and Shiro have time to regain their strength and plan their next steps. Shiro finally learns more about what Keith already knew about him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m thriving off comments, so I’m always happy to receive one<3
> 
> Thanks a lot @[DwImapla67](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DWImpala67) for beta’ again for this fic!

“The world as we knew it, stopped existing.” 

It’s the first real attempt at an explanation that Keith gives him. The first two days they barely talked, even though Shiro felt that the air around Keith changed. He wasn’t as cautious as before while they tried to regain some energy, slept most of the day and went out to find a nearby house to steal food and clothes. In barely three days, they built themselves a small camp with the bare minimum stuff they had.

Shiro spent most of the time trying to focus and dig in his memory, but to no avail. After the second day a healthy color returned to Keith’s face, which somehow made it harder for Shiro to grasp onto any trail of thought.

“Oh,” Shiro replies and knows it’s not much of an answer. 

He knew that his primary world, fantasy, reality - whatever you want to call it - stopped existing with the arrival of Keith and that blasting thunderstorm, the voice and yellow eyes that he’ll likely never forget. But he still doesn’t know much else. Survival came first and foremost.

When Keith decides to talk to Shiro about it, Shiro’s standing knee deep in the water, searching for any movement under the glossy surface.

Fishing, Shiro realizes, isn’t as easy as TV made it out to be. 

They’d barely stolen enough food in the empty house a 15 minute walk away and soon it will all be used up. Shiro doesn’t want to go through the experience of fatal hunger again and worse, he wouldn’t want Keith to relive it either.

Keith sits on the side and cradles the wolf pup to his chest, pressing his face deep into the fur. Shiro feels eyes on him but tries not to get distracted. He stares into the water for that tiny bit of reflection that could be either a cloud moving above or a fish’s tail flicking under water; it doesn’t matter. When his hand breaks the surface and his fingers dart into the water, splashing up a fountain into his face, Shiro can’t see where his arm aims at but gets a grip on something slippery for a second. For a second, he feels triumphant and tries to tighten his grip.

But then it’s gone again.

Shiro looks back at Keith, his face dripping with water. Keith looks back through Kosmo’s tiny fluffy ears, hiding his grin behind the furr.

Shiro breaks off his gaze and straightens his back for a moment until the water surface stops rippling and he gets a clear sight of the narrow ground again. There are pebbles, water grass, and shells with weird shapes. There’s also his own gruesome reflection in the water with the white hair and the mechanical arm that he still doesn’t trust with fluids. The sun shines directly above them now, and at night a speckled sky shows the way. 

“How can all of this not be real?” Shiro asks the pebbles in the water.

He looks back at Keith in time to watch him hold a piece of dried meat under Kosmo’s snout, waiting for the puppy to lick at it tentatively and then take it in one bite without hesitation.

“I don’t think it’s not _not_ real.” Keith’s eyes shift from Kosmo to Shiro and back to the wolf again. “It’s complicated.”

Shiro doesn’t nod but takes a look around instead. Wherever he looks, there are things; there’s the forest, the lake, there are fish with their scales reflecting the sun above them once in a while. Some of them are different from how Shiro thinks he remembers them. When he touches the grass, it tickles his palm, when the wind blows around them, he feels cold. When he walks near the shore of the lake, the wet, grainy ground spreads between his toes. 

Shiro lets out a big sigh. It’s complicated indeed. 

The wolf yaps and howls for no reason. They both look up at him.

Shiro stays quiet for a moment as he watches the wolf’s small red tongue dart out and travel over his snout before it disappears again. “I think I need a wash,” he says and takes the first few hesitant steps back toward the shore, where Keith sits.

They walk back to their shabby camp together. Shiro starts shedding his clothes, hyper aware of Keith’s presence. But the man with the wolf in his arm turns around politely, and as far as Shiro can tell, he doesn't peek. Keith is quiet and remains quiet even when Shiro walks back to the water.

These past days they weren’t able to explore the area further around them yet. The tranquility of this new planet - or its reality - seems to be genuine, but Shiro can’t trust it yet. Although it’s certainly better than the last one. 

The sand sticks to Shiro’s soles as he walks over the partly muddy, partly sandy soil. He doesn’t stop walking until the water swallows him left and right and his feet are unable to touch the ground. He then dips into the water once, before he starts washing the dirt and sweat off his face. 

The bath in the lake feels refreshing, the feeling of water on his skin is almost addicting. It’s no wonder since only a few days earlier they almost died because they lacked it. 

Shiro throws a look back to the shore to see if Keith’s still there, and is disappointed to find the place where Keith sat sometime ago, empty. The sky above them is a quiet cloudless blue, peaceful even, and yet Shiro wonders if this reality will become an opportunity, or just another trap, too. 

Thankfully, his headache from before hadn’t returned in these past days. Shiro doesn’t want to jinx it but there was something weird about it: The timing, the feeling, just _everything_. It seems like something minor, but Shiro can’t stop listening to his body for a single hint that it could return.

As much as this planet seems like a serene utopia, Shiro knows they can’t stay forever. 

A dark shadow spreads over the greenish water. Shiro’s thorax tightens painfully. He tilts his head up and feels relieved when he makes out a colossal white cotton cloud float over the sky. 

He takes a deep breath and dives in again. Exhalation bubbles escape his mouth and sparkle up, up, to the sky, to the surface where they burst soundless.

After a few days, both Keith’s and his routine is pretty set. Keith washes himself in the morning, finds something for the wolf to eat and then rests in a green spot under the sun until the glossy black curls on his head dry into heavy black cotton candy. Shiro usually wakes a little later, and watches Keith’s back from far away while he eats. 

He then tries his luck at finding food or works out on the ground. They are both exhausted, but Shiro knows he won’t be of any help if he doesn’t push himself and gains a bit of muscle.

Keith usually collects sticks and leaves to lit up the fire in the evening, when the air cools and the only light comes from the night sky. Shiro usually washes himself in the meantime. Every time, Keith came back an hour later, often with some berries or mushrooms too, muttering to his wolf about fires and how to start them. So far neither him or Shiro - or Kosmo, for that matter - have hardly been successful in starting one. Instead, they usually huddle together as the night progresses, seeking for the much needed body heat to bear the cold.

One day Shiro mindlessly exits the lake and walks back to their camp and only notices Keith when he’s a meter away from him. Keith holds a stick in his hand with his eyes fixed on something that looks like a picture drawn into the ground.

Shiro’s steps halt in time with his ability to think. He stares at the back of Keith’s head, at the hair sticking sweat-plastered to his neck; completely paralyzed. There’s undoubtedly the sounds of an alarm bell ringing in his head, making it somehow even harder to move as Keith straightens his back and his head tilts to the spot where Shiro stands. 

Shiro can feel his puzzled look even though he can’t see it. Then Keith raises his head.

Their interactions have been loaded before, but Shiro harbors a slight suspicion that this moment will only increase the awkwardness between them. Shiro watches, jaw slacked, as Keith’s gaze travels from his bare feet up to his calves and thighs with soft white hair, until Keith’s eyes - certainly not having planned this — lands on the spot between Shiro’s legs. 

The reaction that follows is everything but subtle: Keith’s mouth simply falls open.

The sudden pressure to just do something makes it even harder for Shiro to react. He knows his brain is sending signals - _move, hide, run! -_ but it’s all in vain. He could have simply walked a few steps and reach for his clothes on the ground, but he just stares back, skin prickling and cheeks heating under Keith’s intense gaze.

Only after a long stare, Keith averts his eyes.

“Sorry.” Shiro’s voice is squeaky and coarse. Keith’s face is completely red. Finally, his legs receive the order to turn away and dress, and so Shiro does. For the rest of the day, Keith doesn’t meet his eyes, carefully looking anywhere but Shiro, and in the night, he doesn’t shift closer as usual, normally when he assumes Shiro must be asleep and presses close against his loyal cosmic wolf instead.

It takes some time until they both recover to the point that instead of silence, their days are filled with discussions about their next steps. 

The flames’ hands of Keith’s first successful fire grasp for the stars one evening, and as the three of them - Keith, Shiro and the wolf - gather close to the glinting warmth, Keith makes a sound in the back of his throat.

“Shiro,” he starts, hands on Kosmo. Shiro’s eyes were already on him. “Have any of your memories returned?”

For a brief moment, Shiro thinks about his dream. His dream about _Keith_. Him and Keith, talking about the future, about what happens after the war. Keith’s flirty tone.

“No,” he lies, eyes shifting away. “They haven’t.”

Keith nods, doesn’t look annoyed or disappointed. He must be. If he was his friend, and Shiro assumes they have been _good_ friends, it must be disheartening to find that Shiro still doesn’t know who he is.

“I’m sorry,” Shiro says. 

Their eyes meet. For the first time in a while, Keith holds his gaze for a while and doesn’t shy away from him. When he does, it’s to press his face into the wolf’s fur again. 

Kosmo, as Shiro finds, likes all the attention Keith gives him. He also loves to just lie on the ground or run up and down small hills until his tongue hangs out of his mouth.

“When I woke up,” Keith says tentatively, “I didn’t remember either.” 

Keith uses a branch to stoke the fire. The flames lick higher and even though the air in the woods is cold, they are plenty warm now.

There’s a heavy pause before Keith continues. He puts away the branch again, eyes still on the fire. Although the speckles of light reflect in his eyes, it can’t balance the sober look in them. “I lived a life similar to yours. For a few days.”

“What happened?” Shiro asks, trying to keep his voice steady despite the heart throbbing in his chest. 

“I couldn’t stop the feeling that something, someone was missing. Even though the reality I lived in made me think I have a good life it felt hollow. Then,” he clears his throat. “I remembered you.”

Keith pointedly leaves his eyes on the campfire. “And the others. The Paladins,” Keith adds quickly.

“Oh,” Shiro says again and wonders when he’ll be able to say something sufficient to meet Keith’s pain. “How did you find me?” Shiro asks then.

Keith lies on his back, head tilted toward the stars. “It’s uhm, a blur.” The statement hangs in the air. “Before… everything, we shared a bond. It’s weird to explain, uhhh. Space magic?” Keith looks up at him, a small smile finding its way on his face. Shiro raises an eyebrow at him.

“Space magic.” He makes no attempt at sounding convinced.

“Yeah,” Keith exhales a breath short of a laugh. “Believe it or not, space magic wove us together. We all could feel it at times.”

“ _We_ ,” Shiro holds his breath for a moment, “sound like a really weird cult.”

It’s enough to break Keith: He starts laughing so hard that Kosmo slowly slides off his belly and whines in protest, but also wags his tail in excitement about the reaction of his master. 

Shiro can’t help but smile at him. There’s something deeply satisfying about making Keith laugh for the first time in days or weeks. About being the reason that Keith can feel happiness even if it is only for a moment.

“We are,” Keith laughs and wipes his eyes. “God, Shiro,” he yaps and flattens his breath. Kosmo flees to Shiro’s side and curls on his lap. Shiro welcomes him easily and buries his hand in his fur.

“I felt you close.” His eyes are dry again. “And suddenly I found myself near the Garrison.”

“At the bar?” Shiro asks him, surprised. Keith nods.

“I’m not a psychic,” Keith explains. “I know, it’s a lot to understand. The war, going to space. The flying robot cats.” He looks at Shiro in a way that says ‘I don’t know how you can believe the things I tell you.’ “But I can’t teleport like Kosmo. I don’t know how it worked the first time, or the second.” 

In Shiro’s lap, the wolf yawns. The darkness closed in on another inch around them. It must be late, but there’s no way of telling.

“Through the sheer power of friendship,” Shiro says, dryly and out of nowhere. He holds back his grin until he sees Keith’s mouth twitch.

“Through the sheer power of our _cult_ ,” Keith jokes and laughs, so light and airy that Shiro fears that smile could float away and never come back again.

*

Camping without resources doesn’t get any easier. They have to rest, most of the time because of the shortage of food. The little energy they have is reserved for their physical and mental recovery and for finding food for the following day.

Every evening, they sit close to each other with Kosmo cuddled up in Keith’s lap, who sometimes honors Shiro by crawling into his lap, too. The way the wolf had grown in size, it seemed he grew an inch every day. Shiro can feel him getting heavier every time the wolf comes trotting towards him and sits in his lap.

“The spaceships,” Shiro says one day as he looks at Keith's wound from the Altean arm. He speaks so sudden that Keith almost bangs his head against his chin when he looks up.

“The Lions. Where are they _?_ ” Shiro asks and thumbs over the scar. It’s healing, slowly but good enough. 

There are a few things Keith has told him about. The Lions, who piloted which. The Alteans, the Galras, the other aliens. It’s like listening to a sci-fi book being retold, not like his life. But somehow it all clicks into place whenever Keith tells him about it.

“Gone.”

Shiro scoffs. “Would have been too easy, huh.”

Keith returns a tired smile.

“We used to be able to call them,” Keith says. “But Black doesn’t come to me, no matter how much I call out to him.”

“You’ve tried this before you met me, too?” Shiro asks.

“Yeah,” Keith says, his voice coarse and low. He stokes the fire again. “Many times.”

Shiro can’t even imagine what must have gone through Keith’s mind in all these days, weeks, months that they met at the bar while Shiro thought of him as a mere stranger. 

He doesn’t notice that he’s still holding on to Keith’s arm, thumb slowly stroking over the unharmed skin. It’s morning and Keith’s hair is still wet from when he washed it. A strong breeze of wind blows through single strands, playing with one or two.

In his mind, Shiro thinks that he wishes he could have been there for Keith from the start. It feels weird to drop that on him, because right now, they are still strangers. Shiro must be different from how Keith remembered him, too.

The moment passes fast, just as it had come, for Shiro to say anything about it. 

“How is it?” Keith asks, breaking the heavy moment between them.

“Healing,” Shiro says. Keith nods. He slowly retreats his arm back “Shiro,” he says, his head raised, eyes locking with his’. There’s fierce determination in his face.

“I think it’s time to plan our next step,” Keith tells him. “And search for the Paladins.”

The following morning, they both wash their faces in the lake side by side, pack what little belongings they have, and start walking east into the direction where the house lays that they encountered when they first arrived.

They pass the trees and trunks, small green bushes with poison-red berries, plumply hanging from weak branches. Shiro looks all around him, while walking. The area looks beautiful.

“It’s weird to think that this isn’t a new planet. Or _Earth_ ,” he comments.

“It’s not,” Keith answers with a certainty that baffles Shiro. Upon his bewildered look, Keith goes on, “I’m not even sure if we ever left the planet we almost died on.”

Shiro doesn’t respond. It’s hard to wrap his mind around it.

“When I first woke up, I thought I was on Earth,” Keith continues. He halts for a moment to bend down and pick up a stick. He throws it in the direction they’re walking for Kosmo to chase after, but the wolf ignores it. “And when I was in your reality, I too thought we were on Earth

“What makes you so sure we’re not on Earth _now_?” Shiro asks him. He mirrors Keith in picking up a stick and throwing it. Kosmo only gives Shiro a curious look, without paying attention to it.

“Right back to the start,” Keith sighs with a look at his wolf. “You’ve learned this before, buddy.” Kosmo yaps at him and jumps around. Keith smiles softly, then he turns to look at Shiro. 

“There are rules in this reality that don’t apply to Earth.”

Shiro furrows his brows. “Like what?”

Keith smiles a little to himself and picks up another stick. He holds it up against the light. 

“Laws of Motion, for example.”

When Shiro’s gaze focuses on the stick, Keith opens his hand and drops it. The stick lands a few centimeters away from where it should have landed. Shiro first stares at the stick on the ground, then at Keith. His mouth is slightly opened.

“It’s not as obvious when we throw it,” Keith says, before he crouches down to pick up a stone. 

Shiro stares at the stick next to where Keith’s crouching down. He’s only capable of a small, “What?” before Keith stands up again.

“This one I completely found out by accident.” Without further explanation, he holds out his hand, palm facing up. He sets the stone on top, and to Shiro, it just, looks like a regular stone.

Then Keith starts spinning it.

They both watch the stone spinning endlessly around its own axis, never exhausting the strength of the first few turns that Keith gave him. 

Shiro sucks a breath in. “What—”

“The Laws we know don’t apply sometimes,” Keith interrupts and closes his fist around the spinning stone, stopping it ultimately. “Everything that falls, falls at an angle. If I start spinning an object, it won’t stop spinning.”

He looks from his closed fist up to Shiro. “It took weeks for me to notice,” he confesses.

He drops the stone, this time not to demonstrate anything else with the stone but to get rid of it.

“I haven’t noticed anything,” Shiro says, still baffled how this could slip his attention. They resume their steps again, walking next to each other.

“You did,” Keith insists. “Remember the people?”

Shiro thinks for a moment. There’s not one person he can really remember from his previous reality. “The faces,” Shiro suddenly remembers. “I kept forgetting them.”

Keith hums. 

All conversations with Keith were clear as day, but he barely remembers that he was supposed to have a husband. It never really felt like he was _actually_ married.

“It’s the same for me,” Keith confesses. “Even when I knew it wasn’t real, I still couldn’t remember other people’s faces.”

“It makes no sense,” Shiro says. “What if it is our memory?”

Keith doesn’t reply instantly this time, and together, they walk up the last bit of the hill that should lead them to the house they broke into. 

“I don’t think it’s our memory,” Keith says quietly. They reach the hill with the last bit of effort and halt on top of it. Beneath them spans more wilderness, and further away at the horizon is the hint of streets and city lights.

“I think the issue lies with the faces,” Keith says, eyes landing on the spot where the house should be. Shiro looks the same way, wiping away a few drops of sweat from his forehead.

“It might be a reach,” Keith continues as Shiro stares at the bare spot, “but I think the people in these worlds aren’t real, and that’s why their faces kept changing.”

Shiro breathes out slowly, and looks from the blank spot back to Keith.

“It’s the only good news, so far.” Keith nods toward the slope of the hill and the beginning of a city in the distance. Kosmo sits to his left, waddling his tail. 

“How?” Shiro asks breathlessly, unsure if he’s ready for another piece of information that will shatter everything he believed in.

Keith turns to him, then takes the first step down the hill. “If the Witch is the one creating these realities and trapping us,” he says, stops and turns again, waiting for Shiro to follow him, “then that means she doesn’t have the capacities to uphold them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Finding the Blue Paladin


	5. Two Sides of the Same Coin - Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro huffs a breath and follows quickly. It could take days, or hours until they find something, someone. Maybe none of Keith’s friends are here. Maybe they are stuck somewhere else.
> 
> Or maybe, he thinks with a dropping stomach, they didn’t luck out like Shiro did. 
> 
> Maybe they are already dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't plan to update this fic so soon, but my wife is impatient and wants to know how the story continues. Here we go.
> 
> Not sure if anyone's interested in this still! But yeah, lemme know lol. This chapter was especially enjoyable because I could finally go rogue on some Sheith bonding. I missed that in this fic ahhhh.

“It’s just gone,” Shiro notes. The house from before is nowhere to be found. Keith only lingers a moment, then looks at the far horizon line. The weather couldn’t be any better: idle sunshine and warmed-up air. The sun high above them drops rays and speckles of its light everywhere. 

“Yeah,” Keith breathes with a weak smile.

“You’re so used to this. This world always changing, playing only after its own rules,” Shiro states, picks up a branch from the ground to let it fall and see it drop at an angle. “I’m not.”

“That's okay, Shiro,” Keith reassures.

“Sorry.” Shiro looks from the branch to Keith. Think of all the questions that burn on his tongue, every hour, every day. And that no matter how hard he tries, all his memories of Keith never return. He must be a burden to him. And he takes so long to understand.

“I’m no help.”

Keith’s body is in a half turn, facing away from Shiro mid-step. He hesitates, eyes big and wonderful in the warm light. “Shiro,” he says softly, tone dripping with emotion. “You’re everything _but_.”

Keith holds his gaze, strong, determined. Eyes so clear, so dark, so deep.

_I’m not alone anymore. You’re with me._

_That_

_counts more_ _than anything._

Shiro swallows and nods. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

Keith's eyes are on him still.

“I don’t mind the stupid questions,” Keith says. Shiro looks up at him in surprise, but spots the small, smug smile on his face and cracks a smile in return. “So, come.”

The walk to the city is a quiet one. Soon, they leave the trees and grass behind and are met tall buildings throwing large black shadows on grey asphalt. Once in a while, Shiro tries to take a closer look at all the buildings, small houses and flats, left and right from them, or even glance into a window to see if someone lives in there, but every time the facades and windows blur right in front of his eyes, as if something or _someone_ stops him from looking at it too closely.

So he stops and focuses on the ground in front of him.

Once in a while there are permanent places that stay. 

“It’s weird for a person that wants to kill us to create such a peaceful place,” Keith comments when they pass a public park. Shiro lets himself listen to the soft-sounding drizzle of a high water fountain right in the middle of the green area, surrounded by flowers in every color and variation. One flower certainly grows dominant than others; it’s tinted with a deep pink, almost artificially so.

They watch the sprinkle, the sway of flowers in a soft breeze, together. Then Shiro watches Keith, as he looks at the fountain with furrowed brows, with his hair swaying gently in the wind.

“Do you think _she_ knows we’re here?” Shiro asks. Can she? Shiro knows nothing of the Witch or her powers. If she creates the space he and Keith move in, how could she not know?

“I think we would know by now if she noticed us.” Keith looks away from the fountain and to Shiro. “She made it pretty clear when she wanted us dead the last time.”

Shiro remembers the headaches right before the Witches' attack, remembers his and the next world spinning out of control. “It might be good to stay low.”

“Yeah,” Keith reaches out to touch his hand gently, squeezing it for a moment. Before Shiro processes the touch, the hand is gone already.

“Let’s go?”

Shiro huffs a breath and follows quickly. It could take days, or hours until they find something, someone. Maybe _none_ of Keith’s friends are here. Maybe they are stuck somewhere else.

Or maybe, he thinks with a dropping stomach, they didn’t luck out like Shiro did. 

Maybe they are already dead.

They wander around not for long when Shiro feels a pull in his tummy area. Right there and then, they find a small convenience store where few people walk in and out, faces washed out whenever Shiro tries to take a closer look.

“We should think about food,” he says, shaking his head and looks to Keith. His stomach must be rumbling because of hunger. Food was hard to come by in the past days, and Shiro craves something _real_ to eat. 

“Have you stolen food before, Shiro?” Keith asks, then lays his palm flatly against his forehead when Shiro meets him with a surprised look. “God, forget it. I’m dumb—”

“Since you’ve asked, no, I don’t think so,” Shiro grins. There might be no particular memory stored in his brain, but it doesn’t seem like himself. Shiro’s grin drops immediately, the longer he thinks about it. “Wait, have _you_?”

“Oh," Keith's stutters out a breath. "I’m not telling you.” He walks a few steps, before adding: “I finally can save my reputation, now that you have no record of my past.”

“Oh, so we’re joking about that now?” Shiro follows suit and grins, leans into Keith’s space. "Suddenly my lack of memories is funny, huh?" 

"Don't be a dick," Keith laughs and shoves him. Shiro barks out a laugh, and wonders if in the past that he doesn't remember, interacting with Keith has always been that easy.

"So?" he asks. "I mean, I don't mind."

“Yeah." He bites his lower lip, takes a breath. "I’m done feeling sad,” Keith proclaims.

“Trying to see the positive,” Shiro helps and walks with him. Then, because he genuinely still wonders, and also, because he wants to tease him, too:

“Don’t tell me you were a bad boy, Keith. Leather and everything?” Shiro feels another pull in his gut area, a feeling so faint it’s barely there. They enter the convenience store together, Keith in front of him, brushing his hair back with one hand as he approaches the closest shelf. Keith starts sorting through cans of food, back turned to Shiro.

Even though he doesn't look back at him, Shiro can hear the chuckle clearly in his reply.

“Not telling you.”

Once in a while they check for the cashier, stiff and quietly standing in the corner in front of the register, then stuff their pockets and bags with food. Barely a person comes by, and barely one stays or looks at them.

There’s another sudden pull in Shiro’s stomach area, but now that they are both quiet and concentrated, he realizes it’s not really his stomach he’s feeling. It’s both a feeling under his ribs and in his whole body, a tug and pull within him. Then he looks up, and for the first time in a while, he gets the feeling that he’s looking at someone familiar.

Even if his life depended on it, Shiro couldn’t remember who he was, but the short brown hair, the green jacket, and especially the lax way in which the guy stood and mustered the shelf in front of him made Shiro think that he must know him. 

He nudges Keith, who is busy putting a ton of dog treats into his pockets. He looks up and spots who Shiro nods at.

They thought it would maybe take days. Weeks. But not merely hours—

Keith stares at the guy open-mouthed, eyes wide, hand wandering to his upper belly. “Ugh,” he groans quietly, still with a look of happiness and despair on his face. “I can’t believe how relieved I feel to see _him_.”

It’s certainly a statement. Shiro raises an eyebrow, then gets pulled behind a single orange juicer a second later.

The guy does his groceries, with seemingly no care in the world. He takes cans, packages, or bottles from the shelf, then puts half of it back again. He whistles too, from time. He’s not exactly tall but lanky, barely muscular at best and wears a haircut with a too short fringe. Wearing a pair of comfortable blue jeans, the guy’s moves to the store’s fridge and stares at the different brands of milk, until he decides on one and puts them in his shopping bag.

“Three canisters of fresh milk. Who buys that many?” Shiro mutters to Keith, who snorts in return. Then they both duck, because the guy just whipped around at the sound of Shiro's voice and looked into their direction.

“ _Lance_ does, apparently,” Keith whispers back even quieter, crouching next to Shiro. His voice is feverish, excited, and he tries to watch Lance from the spot where they are hiding. "Fuck," Keith mutters. Shiro on the other hand, feels just acutely aware of how close they are while ducking. 

Lance. That name _is_ familiar. A few memories are nudging at the edge of his mind, trying to surface but simply won’t. It doesn’t matter either way – they found him. Shiro feels his on the edge, his skin prickle, his stomach turn, and wetness form at the corner of his eyes. “We found your friend in this reality?” he asks Keith, his throat suddenly feeling tight, forgetting about the close and galling proximity to him.

 _Lance_ picks his ear and pulls a face as he looks at another fridge with different sorts of meat cuts. He then proceeds to pay for his groceries, and carelessly packing most of it into his bags at once. Keith nods with the corners of his mouth turned in a amused, downwards smile, as his eyes follow the guy.

“Yeah, Shiro." Keith's grin is vibrant now. "We found him.”

They are barely hiding that they follow him all the way from the store down the road or that they listen to his phone call to another person. It’s almost too easy when they find out that Lance is invited to a _wedding_ in the same area.

“I can’t believe how dumb he is,” Keith mumbles as Shiro takes notes of the address and the names of the engaged pair. 

“Shh,” Shiro can’t help but laugh, and puts the paper away into his pocket. He slows his steps until they finally halt altogether. “The easier the better.” 

Lance walks away, takes a turn at a corner and is out of sight.

"Should we just approach him?” Shiro asks and thinks of the time when Keith lingered in the bar, waiting. It took weeks, or months for Keith to talk to him. Was he afraid Shiro would freak out? Remember him? Or worse, go nuts and alarm the Witch, and put his and Keith’s location on display? Do they need to be careful with that guy, too?

“I don’t know.” Keith puts his hands into his pockets. “It’s Lance,” he says as if it’s self-explanatory. 

Shiro looks at him questioning. “Yeah?”

Keith takes a deep breath and turns to Shiro. “We’ve never been on good terms.”

Shiro furrows his brow. “But you’re friends?”

“Hard to explain,” Keith deflects, looks at the ground. “We are. Kind of. Who knows if he remembers.” 

Shiro puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes lightly. Keith almost jolts under the touch, looks from his shoulder to Shiro’s hand. With a thump in his ribcage, Shiro notices Keith’s burning cheeks, and retreats his hand again at once.

Keith’s eyes follow the movement, then he looks to the side. “The point is: I’m afraid he’ll freak out if we overwhelm him all at once,” he explains. 

Shiro feels a shiver, but it’s only natural. The sun wandered from one side to another, and burns red in the far sky, slowly dipping behind a mountain line.

“We need to find out more first. There’s a slim chance that it’s _not_ Lance after all.”

Shiro nods. “What if he’s not?”

Keith looks up to him as they walk next to each other. “I don’t know, Shiro.”

* * *

The next day they construct the plan to approach Lance at the wedding, and to try and find out what he knows. He hasn’t seen Shiro or Keith when they quietly followed him, so there could be a chance he remembers them. Either way, they can’t lose track of him.

Shiro tells Keith about the pull in his stomach, and the shorter man smiles gently. “It’s the bond,” he explains. “You felt it while we were near Lance? It’s so faint even I only notice when I’m concentrating.”

The statement feels light to Shiro. It makes him… happy, he realizes, because it means he is part of something. It means something to Keith, and now to Shiro, too. In the evening, he listens to his own body, searches for the feeling of the pull that he so easily misunderstood for hunger, or a grumbling stomach. But there’s nothing.

The wedding feels both like being part of a well-played theater and like the most human, speak, normal thing Shiro has done in a while. It’s open-air, outside of another park area plastered with the same kind of pink flowers they saw the other day, grown over and over every speckle of green. Some segments of the wedding decorations use them too. The faceless bride carries a bouquet of them.

Getting to the wedding in stolen suits was easy. Nobody approached them or noticed them, too carried away with chatter about the wedding. As soon as Shiro stops listening to them closer, their conversations turn to wordless mush.

Shiro lets his gaze wander around the scene of unrecognizable faces and people, of tables with decorations, flowers, plates and cutlery and a fountain of something that looks and smells like a milkshake in the middle of the buffet table.

“What now?” Shiro asks, standing in the entrance with his hands in his pockets.

Keith seems nervous, gaze snapping from one thing or person to another. He shrugs, then: “Look around,” he mutters. He has his hair braided into the neatest braid he could do in the short time they had since noon. 

Shiro had plucked one of the pink flowers earlier and held it in Keith’s direction when they arrived. With a moment of hesitation, Keith had picked the flower from Shiro’s hand and braided it into his hair. The pink color looked even brighter against the black of Keith’s braid. The soft summer light shines on his face and lights it up, his usual sharp features appear softened up. He looks beautiful, Shiro thinks. Today even more than yesterday.

Shiro looks at him sheepishly, now. Keith’s face is too serious for a wedding where everyone is cheerful and happy. 

Shiro stops his determined first step by holding onto his shoulder with the Altean hand. “Wait,” he says, leaning closer to whisper into his ear. “Should we... do something to blend in?”

Keith looks back at him, mouth slightly opened and a question on his face. Shiro looks back, lost in thought, wondering why Keith almost seems agitated every time he touches his shoulder, when suddenly a strong scent hits Shiro’s nostrils.

It’s the smell of _fried potatoes_.

“What do you mean?” Keith asks, face slightly red again. Shiro looks into the direction of the delicious scent of fried fat and potatoes. This time, it’s really his stomach grumbling and not a magical bond of friendship.

“I mean—” Shiro begins, but trails off.

Fake or not, the smell is there, too close for Shiro to ignore. He and Keith both hadn’t had some real food for days, maybe weeks. The groceries from the convenience store was at least something, but they didn’t cook it and therefore hadn’t had a warm meal in a while.

Whatever they found to sustain themselves with in the past days, it never smelled as good and alluring as those fried potatoes do. 

“We could act as a couple,” Shiro suggests, ignoring the jitter of his nerves. Fried potatoes, he tries to distract himself. Shiro doesn’t know where his own sudden boldness comes from. Maybe it’s the hunger, maybe it’s the whole no-win situation. Maybe it’s Keith looking good in a suit. For a moment, Shiro wonders if it’s unusual for him to offer something so easily to Keith, if it was off-putting. If Keith thought he was being weird. Shiro’s eyes glance from his hands to Keith’s face and back to the wedding, searching for the food.

“So no one notices we’re shady imposters,” he adds.

Keith’s breath hitches and for a split second, Shiro’s stomach turns and he fears he did something very, very wrong.

It’s impossible to ignore that he feels drawn to Keith in every way but the suggestion was sincere. They _are_ standing out against the other guests. And as Keith told him before, as soon as they draw attention to themselves, the reality they are in crumbles and Haggar appears. At least it’s been like that for a few times already.

Shiro fumbles with his hands and words. “Keith. Never mind. I think it will be fine. They people here aren’t—” Shiro stumbles over the words.

“We, uh—” Keith’s face slowly turns red. Shiro’s unsure if it’s from anger or embarrassment, but he feels like he should salvage the situation.

“I didn’t want to make things weird,” he hurries to say and turns away, eyes searching for the food again instead of returning Keith's intense gaze. “I didn’t want to—“

But as Shiro feels his head getting redder and redder and an unhappy stab in his heart for even suggesting something so ridiculous — they aren’t on a real wedding, they are in a fake reality searching for friends that Shiro doesn’t really remember — he suddenly feels the softest brush against his human hand. He dares to look down where slowly, Keith’s fingers grapple their way into Shiro’s hand, working on intertwining them.

“Let’s blend in,” Keith croaks and Shiro, so utterly lost of words, just squeezes his hand.

For a while they just stand there, holding hands. Keith feels sweaty in his palm with every minute that he holds onto him, so Shiro takes the first tentative steps to loosen up. He points at the buffet he finally spotted in the corner, next to the entrance of a maze made of hedges.

“Keith,” he says, “now that you’re my fake date, would you give me the honor of accompanying me to the fried potatoes that have been making me produce an unhealthy amount of salvia this whole time I’m smelling them?” Shiro makes a point of sounding official and serious, with the desired effect: Keith loosens his grip, relaxes his shoulders, and tries to hide his smile behind his hand.

Shiro squeezes his hand, cracking a relieved smile, too.

“Let’s get you those potatoes,” Keith accepts, and tugs Shiro into the right direction.

For a while, Lance is nowhere to be seen, and in the meantime while they wait, they do their best to use the time. Keith brings over more plates of food the more time passes, and once in a while they quietly listen in on conversations that replay once in a while.

The longer they stay, the eerier it gets.

“It was the same when I found you. Always the same conversations, all around you.” Keith looks at a few couples dancing in the middle to tunes both he and Shiro have never heard in their life. “For me too, at the beginning. Until I was able to snap out of it.” Keith takes a bottle of water and fills a delicate glass. He takes a few tentative sips, closes his eyes and lets out a sigh.

“Tell me about Lance,” Shiro prompts him. “I won’t get my memories back, if I’m not even trying.”

It’s a straight-up lie, one that Keith doesn’t really buy. It’s obvious in the grimace he pulls. 

He hums first, searching for words. Then he leans back into a lax posture, balancing the glass on his stomach. “He hates me,” Keith says finally.

“How could he?” Shiro breathes, entirely too sincere. It pulls a laugh from Keith.

“Don’t ask me. I didn’t even notice the guy for years,” he takes another sip and drapes his arm over the wooden armrest. “Then he turns up and decides I’m his rival.”

Shiro looks at Keith unconvinced. “His rival?”

Keith shrugs in response. “Again, don’t ask me. Then I thought, since we were all kind of, you know, flying cat-shaped spaceships together, that we could be friends.”

“Let me guess. You didn’t become friends?” A smile curls on Shiro’s lips, infecting Keith. He smiles too, brushing hair out of his face.

“We did not become friends,” Keith concludes. The smile wears out until it fades completely. “Sometimes I-” he stops, clears his throat. When he looks up, his eyes search Shiro’s. “Sometimes I thought, it’s for the better. None of us were together by choice.”

That’s new. At least for Shiro. “Oh,” is all he says.

“Anyways,” Keith brushes the topic off like an unwanted ball of fuzz on an expensive suit, “He might have never wanted my friendship, but he’s very in love with Allura.” 

Shiro leans forward. “Oh?” he asks with a shit-eating grin. “Interesting?”

“Barely.” Keith laughs, showing that he doesn’t mean it. His face gets earnest, but he doesn’t lose the smugness. “It was, uhm. It was nice. She loves him, too.”

In the midst of everything, with all of the uncertainty and struggles, with his slumbering memories and his own fears, it shows Shiro a glimmer of hope. And right in that moment, his gaze falls on the lanky figure of the young man, finally arriving at the party _late_.

Linked in his arm is a petite figure, a girl with short brown hair. She wears a light green dress, glasses, and an impatient look on her face. Lance looks down at her since she’s a couple inches shorter, and intertwines their hands. 

“Here we are, Katie,” Lance says, and the name sounds awkward on his tongue, “most important guests? Us two. Aside from the bride, of course.” He laughs.

“Katie?” Shiro mutters to himself, then looks to Keith. He has noticed them as well, and now watches with eyes wide how Lance guides the shorter woman to the dancing couples in the middle of the garden.

“This can’t be,” Keith mutters, almost stands up from his seat as he cranes his neck to watch them better as they disappear between the swaying bodies.

Shiro can still see them clearly from his spot. Unlike the meld of muffled conversations, he can still hear Lance laugh and ask for a dance, and watch Katie roll her eyes and sigh a ‘yes’. In the mix of moving bodies and swinging skirts, they melt into the dancing flurry. But when the song gets slower, he can still spot them, standing out from everyone else.

With a wide smile on his face, Lance ducks and Katie, no. Pidge, tips up.

“Oh,” Shiro says and thinks of Allura, someone who he still can’t remember. He casts his eyes away with slight embarrassment the moment the young couple's lips are supposed to meet, and instead looks at Keith, who felt so light yesterday and today, who opened up more easily than before... and his crestfallen face.


	6. Two Sides of the Same Coin - Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Have you ever felt like this? That there’s just something bubbling under the surface of your mind. And you know, there’s this strong…” she struggles to continue, and her bottom lip trembles when she speaks, “love, but you don’t know for who, or what, and where it comes from. You’ve never met this person in your whole life—”
> 
> She gets worse, her eyes emptier, hopeless. Shiro knows there’s an urge to break whatever spell there is, but her words also do not ring deaf to his ears. He knows this feeling, he knows, he’s almost the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ouuuuuhhhhh a new chapteeeeeer. I'm very sorry if there are some mistakes in it cause it's late and I had trouble finding a beta. But at least we're getting to some juicy Paladin bonding in this chapter. And maybe,,,, some Pallura??? ;D
> 
> Thanks @ everyone reading & commenting so far! I really love this story even though it's weird. I acknowledge that much.
> 
> A little content warning disclaimer; this chapter deals with many overwhelming feelings.

As if watching a car drive toward a cliff, Shiro finds himself unable to look away from the kiss. 

It’s not enough that all his mental gears grind to a halt at once, all of his senses turn overwhelmed too: The scent of the pink flowers furiously blooming around them assaults his nostrils, and like an orchestrated crescendo, the birds sing crowded above the area and the sounds of moving leaves in the crowns louden. All around the venue, chatter melts into a deafening hum, only counterbalanced by the low whistle of a rising wind in the distance. 

Time around the venue stops completely. 

Another, familiar hum grows loud in Shiro's ears, triggering the instinctual ' _I shouldn't be able to hear this_ ' deep in his gut. 

They shouldn't be here.

At least that’s what his gut tells him at first. It feels… unnatural. Then again, the tickle on and under his skin is a source of comfort and… strangely familiar. 

Like a second nature. Like a sixth instinct. More intuitive than hunger, or thirst. 

There's only one thing that fits that description. Again, it's entirely instinctual when he realizes-

It's the _bond_. 

As the realization dawns upon him, that it is something so natural yet so foreign, something so familiar… Shiro’s eyes start stinging and his body shivers with the feeling. 

It’s bewitching. It’s rough, soft, sharp, round, there at once and far away. Shiro comes dangerously close to simply losing himself in the tumble of emotions. His eyes stare into nothingness as his body tries to balance the inner turmoil washing over him. 

_It's intense._ He's drawn to something invisible, and suddenly that thought hurts, a violent sting, it hurts so bad. Like a spear piercing through a balloon, he feels like all of him will break into a million pieces soon, but he can’t move, can’t say anything, and his heart, it thumps so hard against his ribcage—

An angry scream piercing through his mind. A—

 _A loud slap_ — 

Keith’s hand on the smooth surface of the table snaps Shiro out of it. The air stills, and suddenly, the music starts playing, people around him chatter, and everything returns to normal. 

Their _current_ 'normal' at least. 

Keith stands abruptly and doesn’t look at Shiro. He hesitates for as long as it takes Shiro to pull his gaze away from the couple, their _friends_ , who now seem to talk to each other quietly. Shiro looks back at Keith, waiting cautiously for a reaction. He doesn't dare say anything that could upset him. His arm hair stands in anticipation, and when Keith gives him only one short look and walks off, it hits Shiro completely unprepared. 

He stays, bound to the chair by the resuming thrill of an invisible force, unable to say or do a thing but watching Keith’s hair roll over his back like a black waterfall. His head hangs low between his shoulders until he’s out of sight.

It’s painful to see, and Shiro's eyes shift back to the couple and trace their silhouettes' silver lining against the dip of the setting sun. His eyes are hypnotized by their gentle sway in a motionless space, not knowing that they aren’t alone anymore in their own little atmosphere. 

_Those are Keith's friends_ , he thinks. _They are all he has_. 

The right choice would be to go to them, talk to them, _then_ find Keith. The mission has priority, _getting out of here_ has priority.

But in the distance, a darkness unfurls, low and threatening— but most of all— it’s closing in.

Shiro takes a moment— leaves Keith a moment— before he supports himself and stands up from his chair. A sharp breeze ends the summerly feeling of a perfect world, of the wedding, and Shiro, suddenly, cold and breathless and burning at once, follows a trail of pink flowers to where Keith ran off.

*

"Ah," Pidge turns her head away when Lance tries to kiss her again. She pulls back the hand that had rested on the tall boy's shoulder during their dance and uses it to brush back a strand of hair. It's getting longer every day, she feels. It's not uncomfortable, just… 

When she looks at Lance, he wears a frown and the corner of his mouth dips downward.

"What is it, Katie?" he asks, not masking his disappointment at all. 

If it starts like that, she thinks, she doesn't need to hide her frustration _either_. "Nothing," she says with a sigh. At least she’s trying to hold herself back _this time._

Lance purses his mouth harder. "I don't understand why you've been acting like this."

Lance’s eyes wide, his eyebrows furrowed, but Pidge also reads confusion in it. If he only would realize…

Pidge huffs a breath. "Like _what_? Like every other day?" 

Lance ignores it. Or maybe, he can't react any different. Pidge hasn't figured out that much yet. 

"Since…" he says helplessly and stops himself short. He’s thinking hard, but as so often, he doesn’t get any further and it’s not his fault. Something is blocking his memory, just like it blocks Pidge’s. Something must have happened, that’s worse to him than it is to her, and it protects him from… this. 

Pidge assumes, knows, is used to it, used to the disappointment that while Lance doesn’t understand this world, she feels all alone. She can’t help but feeling like she’s living with a human doll. She holds onto her last strands of hope, because she knows that Lance can’t always be like this. At least she hopes.

But it doesn’t stop her from annoyance boiling up, again and again, every day that she tries to explain it to him. What Lance fumbles to find words for is _everything_ that happened between since they arrived here.

The giant puddle of unresolved feelings. The mess that is both of them. Her confusion whenever he calls her Katie, and the anger when he won’t remember she told him to call her Pidge, like ...he _always_ used to. Back when they weren’t _this_.

It just feels _oh so_ disjointed when he calls her her given name, one reserved for family since she got accepted into the Garrison. She hasn’t heard it in a long time.

If Pidge were able to prevent the trainwreck that was about to happen, the moment they awoke together in this place, she _would_ have. But she was lonely, she was sad, she was confused too.

Pidge always thought friendship was messy, and never anticipated _relationships_ to be worse. 

"Lance," she starts and can't help the condescending tone, then pauses to brush a strand of her that had fallen into her face back. She doesn’t have any energy left, not to explain again and fall to deaf ears, or to a repeating cycle where everything resets. "You don't un—" 

But she doesn't get as far. Lance pulls back his hands that held her tenderly before, and leaves her cold, on the dance floor with the swaying, faceless figures. 

"I understand very well." His eyes are still on Pidge while he walks a few steps, hands digging deep into his pockets.

Pidge watches him turn and leave the place, to god-knows-where. Her legs are frozen in place, unable to do anything about it, but on a second thought, maybe she doesn’t want to be the one to save the situation this time around. 

"For fucks sake," she curses under her breath. Once before she remembers that she was left on her own, her friends being scattered everywhere. She remembers despair and fear, but—

it’s a faint memory, hidden behind a grey veil. 

She looks to a pianist sitting down on a white piano at the side, but glances away quickly when he makes eye contact. It's too spooky. And now Lance left her alone. She should go after him, she knows. Find him, make up. Try to make him understand once more.

 _But the flowers_ , Pidge thinks. _Someone left them here._

_I can't go yet._

* 

"Keith," Shiro shouts. The breeze returned, now a little colder. "Keith," he shouts louder over the blowing wind, forgetting all their earlier precautions in an instant. 

After a short walk, Shiro arrives at the beginning of a trail to a small garden. It’s only a small distance but soon there are no people around, and the only sound Shiro hears is the sound of his footsteps against the ground. 

As he comes closer to the entrance of the flower garden, he hears Keith before he sees him, and at once, all the warmth draws from his body. Choked sobs and whimpers lead Shiro’s way until he walks around the corner of a long fence of hedges and spots Keith’s small figure sitting on a stone.

“Hey,” Shiro says softly, heart broken, and comes closer but puts a safe distance between them. Keith doesn’t raise his head, but he sobs quieter now and hides his face in his hands. 

Shiro clenches and relaxes his hand as he watches, helplessly and forlorn on his spot. He doesn’t dare move closer, but also cannot go away. The words he wants to say won’t come either.

Luckily for him, Keith speaks first. 

_“He loved her,”_ he says heartbroken. 

Dumbfounded, Shiro doesn’t reply.

“But he just…” Keith takes deep breaths in between sobs, “he _forgot_ her.”

Shiro just doesn’t move, there’s a mix of emotions within him. Something in his mind nags at him, but he can’t put a finger on it. On top of all the feelings, he feels at loss for how to reply or comfort Keith. He doesn’t know what to do to put Keith at ease. If he only could get back his memory, and knew how he helped when they were close friends. But now, he fears whatever he does isn’t what Keith is expecting from him. 

Their situation is just too confusing, too unique. 

On the other hand… it’s not.

Finally, Shiro feels his legs moving, taking him closer to Keith, his friend, who looks so small at times even though he’s the biggest person Shiro has met. The only guidance he’s got, too.

“Lance is just—” Keith starts but doesn’t finish his sentence, instead looks up to Shiro. Through the black strands of hair that got tousled in the process, and with glassy eyes he looks at him, thinking, biting his lip—

 _Waiting_.

Shiro wants to promise _this Keith_ everything. He wants to promise him he’ll be good, he’ll remember, he’ll do _anything_.so Keith can be happy again. But Shiro hesitates—too surprised by this sudden urge. He doesn’t even know Keith that well, and yet he trusted him the moment he saw him. 

For a _friendship_ , it’s—

“Keith,” he sighs, and it’s the softest sigh, to his own surprise. He reaches out, stops his hand mid-air, and instead stares at him. 

Keith stares back, searching wildly and helplessly for something in the pair of grey eyes, until a sudden blue flash right next to Keith startles them both.

Kosmo, who’s already grown significantly since the last time Shiro saw him, appears out of thin air, takes a few tentative steps to Keith and puts his snout into his lap. With a small whimper, he looks up to Keith, who completely starstruck, stares back at the wolf.

Shiro stares too, eyes wide open.

“He teleported,” Keith states, completely out of it. The tears have stopped rolling from his chin, and he now pets over the head of his wolf excitedly. When he looks up to Shiro, and Shiro meets his gaze, Keith’s expression changes completely.

“Pidge,” Shiro says, completely breathless. “Lance—”

“We can teleport away,” Keith nods, and it’s as if they don’t even have to say the words to each other to completely understand.

“You stay here.” Shiro throws one last look to the wolf, leans forward to touch Keith’s shoulder in reassurance. There’s hope, his mind chants. There’s _hope_.

“And you’ll get them,” Keith finishes for him. He’s mesmerizing— eyes wild and open, sparkling, cheeks red. 

Without another word, Shiro turns and runs. He has to find them, because there's no way they can leave this reality without them. There’s no way Keith would ever leave here without them.

Shiro will get them back to him, and they’ll all leave together. 

*

With each step, the way back turns into a short trip to a different world. 

The airy summer weather that was so transparent and light is gone, and left is a dark, violet burning sky, the music, and the flowers. 

Shiro quickly realizes that all the people who brought an equally lively and equally hexed atmosphere with them, are gone now, but it doesn’t change that this place feels cursed, and as if neither Shiro nor Keith belonged here.

In the middle one single wooden table with white cloth is left, overrun with pink flowers everywhere. Pidge sits on one chair, flower in the hand, silent, as if she’s idly listening to the music coming from the piano. Lance is nowhere to be seen.

Shiro approaches slowly and stops within a good amount of distance. Even from here, he can see how clouded Pidge’s eyes are, as her finger tips softly caress the flower in her hand.

“I’m just odd,” she says slowly. “But who am I telling this? Tomorrow you won’t even remember me, and you won’t have the same face anyway.”

Shiro is unsure if she means him and therefore doesn’t reply. In the distance, dark clouds sweep over the sky.

“Have you ever felt like this? That there’s just something bubbling under the surface of your mind. And you know, there’s this strong…” she struggles to continue, and her bottom lip trembles when she speaks, “love, but you don’t know for who, or what, and where it comes from. You’ve never met this person in your whole life—”

She gets worse, her eyes emptier, hopeless. Shiro knows there’s an urge to break whatever spell there is, but her words also do not ring deaf to his ears. He knows this feeling, he knows, he’s almost the same. 

“Pidge—”

“Or maybe you have,” she carries on ignoring him, eyeing the flower. A single tear runs down her cheek and falls from her chin. When it falls, a new flower sprouts in its place on the table cloth. “Maybe you’ve met her.”

Shiro stares at Pidge with wide eyes, and he feels a burning hatred for that helplessness inside of him. He knows it’s not his fault in theory, but he hates it, hates how much he can’t help the people that once must have trusted him. But maybe there’s a way to make things right.

Pidge cradles another flower in her hand, looking at it, completely lost.

“I, uh,” Shiro hesitates, but then takes a determined step forward, “I have, uh. I think.”

He watches as her eyes widen but she’s not looking up yet. “What did you call me?” she asks after a moment.

Shiro doesn’t waste a second. “Pidge.” And there, she finally looks up.

She stares for a good measure, takes in the white hair, scar, the mechanical floating arm at his right side, and her mouth falls open. Shiro doesn’t dare move and looks back, with what he hopes seems like a friendly smile.

“I know it doesn’t seem like it,” Shiro tells her, and with every word, Pidge’s body relaxes, and she gets closer to standing up and moving toward him, curiously, “but I, uh, we, might have a way out of here.”

For a split second, all around them, the grass, the trees move with the wind’s breath, while Shiro wonders if he was too bold, or if he needs to explain more. But there’s a glint in Pidge’s eyes, and all around her, not as threatening as before, the flowers bloom vividly— and spread their scent.

The piano music stops at once—

“What took you so long?” Pidge asks, jumps off her seat and brushes over her dress. “Let’s go.”

*

It’s all easier said than done.

Thankfully, Keith is still in the place he was before, petting Kosmo and holding onto him as if he was the biggest treasure he’d ever found. Aside from Keith’s obvious love for the animal, that’s true in the way that currently only Kosmo holds a one-way-ticket out of this world. He is the greatest treasure.

Pidge doesn’t ask a lot of questions. She doesn’t seem to remember Shiro— he thinks— and doesn’t seem to remember Keith when they meet him either. 

“We can’t go yet,” she says, as a matter of fact before Keith can even say ‘hello’, “Lance is gone.”

“He’s real, right?” Keith asks her. “He’s not…” he drifts off, because how can he possibly explain what happens to every human being, every world he has been to before? How can he simply say that Lance might not be an actual person but… a dream? A construct of the current reality? Heck, they don’t even know that either.

“Oh, he is,” Pidge insists. “He’s been going on my nerves for months and he’s got the memory of a goldfish.” He looks from Keith to Shiro. “Now that I’ve said that, it doesn’t sound convincing.” 

“Does he change faces?” Shiro asks and tries to remember if Lance’s face stayed the same or not between the two times they saw him. 

“Does he remember Voltron?” Keith says, more on top of things, but gets briefly ignored.

“Oh god, you know about the face changing?” Pidge asks. “That proves at least one theory. No, his dumb face is the same as always.”

“The dumb face, that you kissed,” Keith says, and Shiro can tell that he’s brooding. Pidge splutters.

“Please, let’s not get into that.” She huffs a breath, puts her hands into her hips, and looks at them both in her wide stance. “I need to show you something at my home. Then we find Lance. You said we have a way out of here?”

It’s all going very fast in Shiro’s opinion. Both he and Keith nod dumbfoundedly.

Pidge nods, suddenly full of life. He takes a look back to the abandoned wedding venue, the short spot of grass, decorations and tables that have completely disappeared, and the blooming flowers who are in the process of retreating.

“Allura,” Pidge says, with a look back to the boys. “We’re going to find her, too, right?”

At their hesitant nodding, she stays confident, and starts leading the way.

On the way to Pidge’s house, it turns out that she’s closer to Shiro in terms of her memory. Shiro digs deep in his own, with the realisation that she reminds him of Matt. Matt, before Kerberos. 

It’s not a complete win, Shiro thinks, that he remembers some things, and therefore doesn’t say anything about it. Instead, he exchanges information with Pidge that they gathered from every other reality. Kosmo buzzes off in between, and every time he reappears, they all let out a sharp exhale. The fear that he might disappear forever and take some of that hope with him, hits too close. 

“What are you doing, huh?” Keith murmurs the next time Kosmo zaps to his side, and bites his lip in remorse when Kosmo replies with a whine.

The house is located south of the city, the complete opposite direction than where Shiro and Keith had their first camp. As Pidge walks to open up the garage gate, Shiro glances at Keith more often than not, seeking for a sign that he’s alright. 

So far, Keith has been oddly quiet, and Shiro figures that he must have been exhausted. 

But when their gazes meet, Keith looks away quickly, and if Shiro isn’t mistaken, he spots a faint dark blush on his cheeks.

Thankfully, Pidge moves in, shows them a place to sit— two bean bangs on the side— and pulls a rug off the opposite wall. Behind it hangs a big blackboard with chalk markings, notes on paper, numbers, letters, and more. Pidge walks to the other side of the garage, pulls a chair, snacks and bottles with water close and hands half of it to Shiro, who redistributes it to Keith.

“That’s… a note board for sure,” Shiro helpfully supplies, with the hope of easing the tense silence in the room.

“I gathered some evidence,” Pidge says, completely ignoring him, “that parts of the city will disappear at certain times of the day, or even when Lance or I were apart for a while. The same with people. No person I met seems to come up again.”

“We think it’s, uh Haggar’s doing. Creating these worlds as traps. She’s manipulating us.”

Pidge frowns and looks to Shiro. “Uh. An Altean Witch that tried to kill us a few times already,” he explains. Pidge nods slowly.

“Inconvenient,” she states and moves on. “But for some reason, she... created one space that never changes.” 

Keith’s eyebrows almost meet his hairline. “What?” 

“Have you heard of the Garrison?”

“Yes,” Shiro replies immediately, before Keith can. “In my world, I worked there, but Keith, he didn't—”

“No,” Keith looks at Shiro. “I didn’t work there, but it existed. The Garrison was there too, and when I first searched for you… I went there.”

They stare at each other in surprise, and Shiro racks his brain for a reason why the Garrison was in each of their first realities.

“There must be something.” Pidge draws their attention back to her. “There must be a reason why it’s always there.”

“We shouldn’t get our hopes up—” Keith starts.

“No,” Shiro interrupts. “I think she’s onto something.” Then, when he sees Keith’s disheartened look, he reaches over, takes his hand. “It’s _something_.”

Pidge looks between them, frowns again. “Good,” she says, and nobody expects what she says next. “We’ll need to break in.”

“Woah. Wait,” Keith says. “Break in? You don’t work there?”

Pidge stifles a laugh. “Hell no! The second day I found out that money doesn’t matter in this reality. You’d really think I’d just go to work every day in _imaginary land_?”

Shiro laughs but it doesn’t reach his eyes, because she’s right, absolutely right, and yet he went to work every day until Keith found him and broke him out months later. “Right.” He takes a breath. “Let’s break in.”

He smiles at Pidge and Pidge smiles back. “Guys,” Keith says. "No. You can't mean that. We can't break into a military basis." 

Shiro laughs now, feeling light-hearted. Next to him, Keith bites his lip to hide his smile, folds his arms and shakes his head. Pidge wears a full-blown grin, and a small tear forms in the corner of her eye. Technically, neither Shiro nor Pidge know each other or Keith, but there’s a magnetic pull, a forgotten script, something that binds them together that unrevels something Shiro didn’t think he’d had. 

Friendship.

The moment ends as abrupt as it came with Kosmo zapping into their middle, barking and running in circles in pure excitement. Startled, Shiro notices that he’s about to disappear again, he turns blue and sparkling, but not alone. Keith, Pidge, and Shiro all light up blue, sparkles glittering around all of them.

“We’re teleporting,” Shiro says. “Why is he teleporting us?”

“Kosmo!” Keith exclaims, but Kosmo is almost completely fragmented and doesn’t react.

“No!” Pidge objects. “We can’t go! We have to get Lance first!”

All around them, the garage folds into itself, sucks everything from the outside in, too. The air around them swooshes loudly, and buzzes in their ears. Suddenly, there are stars for a moment, and it’s as if they are levitating in the wide universe.

“Pidge,” Keith says, voice transporting softly over the hum in their ears, “I’m sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh noooo u crazy space wolf, u didnt


	7. Spinning in Spirals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Out of options, the Paladins just go with their new goal of finding Hunk.

It doesn't take long until another world around them unfurls anew. After a moment of readjustments, the new surroundings begin to clear.

On top of feeling disoriented like all three of them do, Pidge also looks nauseous.  She blocks her mouth with one hand and cups her stomach with the other, holding herself together as good as possible.

Unlike her, Keith doesn't feel the same initial gut drop from teleporting with Kosmo. Other than that he's as shocked and surprised to the core.  Kosmo has never acted on his own accord in this way before, and  therefore  leaves Keith puzzled at the plans of this young wolf.

The one most on edge of the three of them is Shiro.  As soon as the three of them rematerialize from blue and white glittering speckles, he looks from one side to another, eyes unfocused, alarmed and paniced.

He only relaxes when he recognizes a closed space surrounding the three of them with no obvious threat nearby. It helps, but Shiro still stays alert.

The three of them find themself surrounded by a muted grey-blue instead of the idle sunshine falling through the windows from before.  They teleported into a room approximately as big as the last one, but inside lie stacks of paper, the mind map is missing, and the few chairs that turned the other place lively,  were exchanged  with long white cloth instead, covering most of the room.

The sudden shift from Pidge's home to this— whatever it is— takes some time for them all to adjust.  Just  before, they'd felt a little glimpse of peace. But now that they warped into a new world, that illusion remains shattered.

Naturally, they don't have the time or capacity to change that.

"You," Pidge growls. She rips both Keith and him out of their jumbled thoughts when she walks in sharp steps toward Keith. "Take us back. Immediately!"

Shiro  barely  realizes what's happening, but shoves himself between her and Keith in an instant. He doesn't know why he'd believe she'd attack him. Better safe than sorry.

"Pidge," he warns, but Keith stops him with a hand on his biceps.

He moves from behind Shiro to next to him. "You're right," he says to her. His eyes are big and round, and if Shiro can read one thing in it, it is honest sympathy.

The ghost of another situation, another conflict from another time  slowly  leaves Shiro and in an instant, his tense body relaxes.  This Keith is someone who has lived through conflicts with his friends before and doesn't need Shiro's protection anymore. He needs to trust Keith, and get rid of the faint impression that lives in his mind. The Keith in his thoughts doesn't take any real shape and is only a ghost of Shiro's memories.  The Keith who's here was alone and found them, and has lived through days with his friends that Shiro doesn't remember.

Just  like that, Keith doesn’t disappoint Shiro. "Well get back immediately," he says and rubs a hand at the back of his neck, then throws a look at Kosmo. The wolf looks back, eyes blinking. "We won’t leave Lance behind."

When Pidge looks at him, her eyes are wet.  Shiro cannot begin to understand what it must be like to think that the only person in this world that you lived with and trusted, got lost somewhere else. Pidge doesn't look like she's feeling more at ease but at least she want to jump Keith’s throat anymore. She  just  stands there, immovable, arms crossed in front of her chest.

When she looks up at Shiro, she catches him left-handed and gives him a measured gaze. Shiro casts his eyes away, shifts them to Kosmo. Out of the corner of his eyes he can see Pidge doing the same.

“So,” Keith says  softly, with an expectant look at his wolf. “Let’s go?” he asks. But Kosmo only whines, making  all of  the Paladins frown.

"Come on, buddy," he encourages and smiles with tight lips. "You did it once, you can do it ag—"

Keith tries it with good words at first, but the sight of the wolf  seemingly  unwilling to bring them back in an instant, doesn’t wake the same patience in Pidge.

"Bring us back to Lance!" she insists, as if shouting would get them there faster. Instead, Kosmo’s ears flop back, and he turns back from Pidge to Keith, and finally to Shiro. Even though he's an animal, his expression reads one clear human emotion: Cluelessness.

Nothing hints to the fact that Kosmo  simply  doesn’t understand. If anything his intuition out of  all of  them seems to be spot on all the time.  It can’t be due to a misunderstanding that he doesn't react, which grows more  apparent  as soon as the wolf hides his tail between his legs.

Something’s wrong, but the image of the scared wolf melts away the anger in Pidge.

Keith gives the wolf another measured look before he places a gentle hand on the wolf’s head, explaining what they already know. "He can't." He reaches down to stroke over Kosmo’s head, then leaves one comforting hand in the back of his neck. “I’m sorry."

Pidge doesn’t revolt, doesn’t shout, doesn’t lose her nerves.  Just  like them, she’s aware that it won’t help, and that they don't know what it'll mean. Not for them, nor for Lance.

Shiro  naively  holds on to the thought that it will be alright in the end, only so he won't lose all hope.

He  barely  got to know Lance in this life with his current memory, but the strings of the bond in him feel like they will tear themselves apart. It hurts. He can only imagine what the other two are thinking, or feeling.

"Fuck." Pidge kicks against a box and upsets a dusty cloud. "Fuck," she swears again, walks a few steps back, then forth, in a circle, until she sits down and hides her face in her hands.

Keith and Shiro exchange a glance.

"Listen," Shiro says and knows it's an impossible promise the moment he starts thinking about it, but he nonetheless crouches down next to Pidge and puts a hand  loosely  on her shoulder. "We'll search… and we'll find him.”

Shiro doesn't begin to imagine what Pidge must have been through.

If it was him who had to leave Keith behind… no, he can’t even consider the possibility. The bare thought turns his heart cold and hard, and trying to imagine it leaves him with a blank space. To Shiro, Keith is… indescribable. He's everything.  Sometimes Shiro feels caught by his own thoughts, gaze flickering shortly to Keith who watches them from a corner.

Even though Pidge’s relationship to, or… her feelings for Lance seem to differ (from whatever the fuck is happening for Shiro  in terms of  Keith), Lance might not be someone she likes in that way but  simply  all she has.

“Pidge,” Shiro's eyes trace Keith's outlines for a last time before looking back to her, hyper-aware of the bond beginning to stir within him. For now it grows beyond what was  barely  a tickle before.

“No matter what, you won’t be alone."

For a moment he thinks his words are to no avail, since they are weak comfort at best. Pidge's head hangs between her shoulders, low and forlorn, and she looks so...small.

There's no reason for her to believe in Shiro and yet—

—she nods.

"I'm afraid," she says.

At that moment, Shiro wonders if Keith and Pidge feel the same thrumming; as if there was another heart beating, in another realm, next to the three of them. Even with a faint thrumming like his, Shiro knows it's there.

With a helping hand from Shiro, Pidge supports herself and stands again, cleaning her clothes with a few pats down on her.

Once she looks up at Shiro, her big green eyes mirror a decision.  There's fear but also a bewildering glimpse of trust in the way she takes his hand and in the way she stands and stretches her back. Pidge nods  slowly, as firm determination returns to her eyes.

"We'll find him," Shiro says.

“And we’ll find her,” Pidge insists. It is as if she has to say it out loud to believe in it herself. Shiro has no other option than giving her a sharp nod. He needs to believe in it too.  He needs to believe that anything comes out of  all of  this, even though most of the time he cannot bring himself to believe in anything.

“Of course," he says, and feels his cheeks straining from his assuring smile.

It's not all an act. Together, they are stronger. Together, even when everything fails, they’ll still have each other in this lonely world.

“I’m sorry,” Keith repeats as he waits, unsure, several steps away from them. He hovers in save distance as if he doesn’t belong. Which is a laughable thought to Shiro. Keith is the one who brought them together after all.

Pidge takes a long, reassuring breath.

“It’s okay. Lance will survive. He’s got more luck than brain after all,” she pulls a grin that’s not quite convincing yet.

Pidge looks away from him, and eyes Kosmo, “More important for now... I think  your wolf brought us here for a reason.”

“The question is, where he exactly brought us," Keith mutters.

"Easy,” Pidge returns, without taking another look around. “We haven't  really  left.

"What do you mean?"

"It's… this here is my home, or was. It's  just— the shades are down, and everything is dusty.  All our belongings are gone, and the stuff that I found in the garage in the first place got covered by these sheets here. Sure, it looks different. But it's the same garage."

It takes some time for both Shiro and Keith to accept her statement. They look around for a whole minute before exchanging a gaze.

“This space,” she explains when two pairs of eyes are back on her, “seems to have  multiple  realities.” She walks to the garage door, and with a push of the doorknob, she opens it. “  I think.”

“As I thought,” she calls from outside, and Keith and Shiro hurry to follow her.  In the first moment, they are all blinded by the orange desert sun, but then walk right under the shadow of a gigantic base.

A military base.

“Everything brings us back here. It’s how you said it is,” Keith says, breathless. “Why?”

Collectively, their gazes travel up to a giant, white booster rocket, that looks nothing like the ones that Shiro remembers.  It’s not exactly small— it’s too high to  really  make out the peak— but he immediately realizes it’s not as high as the rockets… he used to see.

_Huh._

“We were about to break in either way, should we just…” Pidge shrugs, “...go in?”

Shiro looks from the rocket down to the buildings. Everything seems  eerily  quiet, and now that he pays attention to it, there aren’t any people around. Kosmo sniffs next to them on the ground, and  unexpectedly  starts off into the other direction.

“Or we follow the wolf,” Pidge groans, her disagreement with that idea more than obvious. But she doesn’t wait for Keith or Shiro’s answer, as she starts running after the wolf.

“I can’t believe she’s one to spring to action like that,” Shiro comments, falling into steps next to Keith.

But Keith snorts at that, and takes a glance to the side. “I'm not. She searched for her family across the universe on her own. I guess... she and I aren’t that different.”

Again, it’s like Shiro’s missing a puzzle. He wonders if Keith searched for his family and found them, but Shiro’s too reluctant to ask. There's always the case that the answer turns out to be negative. Again, he feels like a coward.

There are other things on his mind, too. "Keith," he starts and draws the other man's eyes to him as they walk, "you felt him too, right? Lance."

Keith takes his time to answer. In the shadow of the rocket, the shadows in his face deepen. He looks worn, tired.

"Yes. It's uh. It's faint."

"It's something," Shiro reassures. Then he reaches out to put a hand on Keith's shoulder, making his steps falter. A few feet ahead of them, Pidge bounces through the street, unaware of leaving them behind. But she's not far.

"How are you?" Shiro asks  softly.

Keith's head tilts down. "I'm alright."

They stand like this, for a moment. "It's not your fault, Keith."

It takes a while, but Keith reaches for the hand on his shoulder, placing his warm palm on top of the cool prosthesis. Aside from his new arm, Shiro also has to get used to actually feeling things with it.

"Thanks, Shiro."

Shiro's heartbeat picks up at the genuinity in Keith's words.  Since the day Keith helped him break out of his static life cycle, Shiro felt like nothing but an extra burden to Keith. Like a helpless extra strung along.

For the first time today he feels he can be there for Keith, and give him back a speckle of hope.

"Keith," Shiro says like he doesn't trust his lips to shape the syllable, "I will do anything to bring them together."

Of all the things Keith could have done, leaning into Shiro is the reaction he least expects.  Immediately, Shiro feels Keith's body warm against his, resulting into Shiro's personal brain mush.

But before Shiro realizes he should catch Keith, he does. Luckily, his body moved all on its own.

Keith’s voice is soft, wavering. "Thank you," he says, and Shiro only overhears it because Keith's mouth moves close to his ear. His breath tickles, and the thought that Keith is so close, so within reach, turns Shiro’s mind dizzy. He feels the bond of the Lions, but even more, he feels—

—his mind running; they haven't been that close before, and it’s doing things to Shiro—

For a moment, Shiro allows himself to stay like this.  Allows Keith to feel like he can rely on Shiro, despite the uncertain future and the real possibility of never getting out of here.

But for a moment, reality doesn't matter, and Shiro can give Keith that kind of pretense without rushing them both to act.

They have to move forward at some point. There’s no turning back.

"Tell me about your other friend," Shiro prompts. Keith leans out of the embrace to look up at Shiro, a conflicted expression hopping over his face.

"He's a good person." Keith breaks away his eyes, and says it without hesitation. “Accepting.” Shiro notices him fumbling with his hands.

“They all seem to be good people.” Shiro smiles. “They must be. After all, they are your friends.”

Keith— and it catches Shiro off guard— blushes. His eyes are on the ground, and his right hand reaches for the back of his neck, fumbling with loose strands.

“We weren’t always—” Keith starts. “Sometimes we did not understand each other at all—”

“And?” Shiro interrupts him. “You’ve sticked together—”

Keith bites his lip, and for a short, hot moment, Shiro wonders if he said the wrong thing.

“You don’t remember this, but—” Keith’s frown deepens, and his voice sounds bitter, “—it was war binding us together, Shiro.”

Keith bites on his lip so  intensely  that Shiro fears he’ll break through skin. He adds, “We never _choose_ to be friends—”

Shiro shakes his head. “We’re here now—,” he interrupts, and feels the confidence in his words growing. “We’re here now, and we’re searching for them. It doesn’t matter why we care for each other.”

“But—” Keith protests.

“They’d do the same for you, Keith.”

Shiro feels this,  genuinely  so. If his friends have any knowledge about Keith at all, they know that he’s a kind person, that he’s loyal, and that he looks out for them, just...

...like he looked out for Shiro all this time.

“Me too, Keith,” Shiro insists, tongue  suddenly  so much looser than before. The way warmth blooms right in Shiro’s chest turns him airy, “I—”

“Guys!” Pidge calls from afar. “Check this out.”

She points at a shop down the street, the only one hinting at a detailed exterior. At first glance, it’s nothing unusual, but from where they are standing, they cannot see what she means.

As if he got caught red-handed, Shiro’s cheeks warm. “I guess we should go,” he says, ignoring the heart thrumming in his chest and the conflicting thoughts in his head. With a deep breath, Shiro looks at Keith, who hadn’t even looked into Pidge’s direction but on the ground instead.

Shiro wonders if he imagines the pinking tips on his ears.

“We should,” Keith mumbles almost  inaudibly, and takes a first step without looking up.  Shiro watches his back straightening as he takes the lead, and follows, mesmerized by the way his beautiful friend picks himself up again.

With a longing squeeze, the thrumming from Shiro’s rib cage moves to the back of his head, so faint in contrast to the ache in his chest that he doesn’t notice it.

The echo of Shiro’s steps carries long through empty streets and leave a  ghostly  quiet behind when they stop. Together they stand a few feet away from the only shop standing out against all the grey buildings in the area.

“A bakery?” Shiro asks. The exterior is sweet, colored in pink and vanille.

Keith’s eyes are set on the shop, with his eyebrow twitching in anticipation. “Patisserie,” he states.

They watch the entrance and the shop’s windows without a sound. The broad windows aren’t see-through despite the illusion of clear glass. Shiro almost expects it, because, of course, nothing would work in this world either.  Maybe  they windows had never worked before, no matter where they ended up, but Shiro hadn't noticed yet. Either way, it's messing with his head.

“Should we go in?” Pidge asks. “It’s where Hunk is, right? It’s gotta be.”

Keith nods, doesn’t even question it. “You remember?” he breathes.

“I,” Pidge starts, holding onto her arm. “Kinda.”

Shiro’s gut drops at the right moment, because immediately Keith’s eyes flicker to him. He hates this feeling; knowing that he’ll let him down.  Softly, Shiro shakes his head, ready to face the disappointment in Keith’s eyes. But Keith has turned his head toward the bakery again. “Let’s go in,” he says, determined. “But we’ve got to be cautious.”

“Do you think it’s a trick?” Shiro asks. They’ve almost found Hunk too  quickly.  On the other hand, it didn’t take long to find Lance and Pidge either.

“All is.” Keith walks toward the entrance. Shiro and Pidge scramble up to follow.

At first glance, the shop's interior is even more pronounced than the exterior. Colorful decorations are everywhere, mirroring the sweet paint of the outside. It's  just  enough to feel comfortable, and not tacky.

Several white round tables with chairs fill the only room inside the shop. They are all set up and accessible before one reaches the display and check-out area.

Shiro takes in the image of a vast diversity of baked goods, pastries and cakes displayed behind glass. A few wooden shelves on the side carry room-temperature drinks and clear bags with cookies. Together it gives the image of an  exceptionally  homely shop with a lot of detail. Shro inhales  sharply. The thought that  all of  it is  just  another illusion hits even harder. 

He imagined all of their realities being a very subtle hell; but the sudden thought strikes him that even though he, Keith and Pidge felt that way, it doesn't mean all of their friends do. He wonder if Lance ever felt unhappy stuck in his world, and his belief that everything was going perfectly well.

“Do you feel as out of place as I do?” Pidge mutters. Keith and Shiro both mumble in agreement, and Pidge gulps. She heads for the first table and takes a seat.

“He’s not here,” Shiro mutters and takes a seat next to her. Nobody is. Not that Shiro would know _who_ he's looking out for.

Keith takes the seat closest to the window and stares at it in thought.

“It seems like this world has stronger limitations than the others,” Keith mutters to himself and stares at the milky glass. In here, they are completely shielded from the outside, but so is the outside from them.

Nobody replies to Keith, because  all of  a sudden, a figure appears behind the counter. Even though Shiro’s mind stays blank, he knows the person must be Hunk; it’s clear from the way Keith and Pidge react. The three of them freeze in place.  Shiro’s convinced they are all thinking of the same thing: How to approach this guy and bring forward a new reality for him. That he's only living in this illusion.

As they watch him take out a few paper bags from under the counter, there’s a rustle coming from behind Hunk. Immediately, Keith tenses next to Shiro.

“What—” Pidge starts in disbelief, mouth gawking. Another figure appears behind Hunk, and it’s unmistakingly who it is.

The second man says something, and Hunk starts laughing. His voice gets clearer. “I went bungee jumping with you last week.”

“That's not enough,” the man next to him laughs, drawing a crooked smile from Hunk.

Next to Shiro, Keith is completely frozen in place, mouth opening and closing again.

Time seems to slow around the three of them as the scene plays out.  Meanwhile, Hunk leans  playfully  over the display as the other man walks around it to clean the dirty glass. When he notices Hunk leaning toward him, he not only reacts with another smile, but leand forward as well.

For Shiro, a world crumbles down all on its own.  “It’s you,” he says, unable to look away from the doppelganger with black hair and a long red stripe on his right cheek kissing Hunk. “ _Keith_.”

Just  as time seems to stop completely, a painful throb reaches Shiro's head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	8. Clear Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s Clear Day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy oh boy oh boy
> 
> Anyone still reading this?
> 
> \---------------  
> What happened last chapter:  
>  _  
> For Shiro, a world crumbles down all on its own. “It’s you,” he says, unable to look away from the doppelganger with black hair and a long red stripe on his right cheek kissing Hunk. “Keith.”_
> 
>  _Just as time seems to stop completely, a painful throb reaches Shiro's head._  
>  \---------------
> 
> cw/spoilers in the end notes.

It’s Clear Day.

Allura wakes up early, with the artificial light system of the Atlas still shut down, but a feeling in her gut. In hindsight it’s as if something in her was sending a warning. 

Most people on the Atlas seem to look forward to a day of break, to forget about being at war for half a day. Given, there is personnel that stays back, and Allura decides she will too.

 _She should be happy_ , the thought enters her mind as soon as she stands up and starts getting dressed for the day. Back on Earth she had wonderful days together with Lance, even though the continuing threat of Haggar loomed over them like a sword in the sky, ready to drop at any time.

A thing Allura always wondered about in the books her mother read to her as a child, was the normalcy of war looming in the background as everyone went on with their life. What an idea, to read war books to a child, Allura thought when she got older. And yet it prepared her to some degree.

Life just goes on for some people; while time stands still for others.

“Hey. Allura?”

Allura hears a knock from the door; she’s more jumpy than she’d like to be.

“Come in,” she says with a surprisingly steady voice, and Lance does.

"You've been off for a while," the Blue Paladin starts, voice soft and soothing and in a way that he never talks to anyone else. "Got much on your mind lately?" 

Allura cracks a smile and leans back. "I suppose." They both know what's been weighing everyone down, including them. The war. The hilarity of it all. The unknown before them.

"I'm here," Lance says it like a promise as he comes closer.

"Yeah." Allura's breath is a stutter. Although she feels drawn to the idea that everything will be fine by default, she can't quite believe it. But she doesn't want Lance to catch on, to know. 

"Bring me back something sparkly?“ Allura asks, because it's all she can think of right now. A silly, unneeded luxury that will take her mind off. 

First, Lance starts, then shows a brilliant smile, confident for hours. "You can count on me, Princess." 

They smile at each other, and if Allura didn't know better, there's an intensity in Lance's eyes. He then gives her a hug, and steps away with a wave. 

But in front of the door, Lance pauses in his movements. One hand he places on the frame and looks over his shoulder. “Are you sure about this?”

If Allura was good at _this_ , she’d just tell the truth. But she isn’t. “I’m perfectly well, Lance. Now go,” she smiles.

None of the Paladins want to go without her–they try to persuade her, one after another until Allura only shakes her head as a reply as she holds back heavy tears in her eyes. 

They all don't seem to really comprehend, but they leave her alone, just like she wished for. At 1200 sharp, it seems like every last living soul exits the Atlas together, leaving behind one broody Altean Princess, all by herself. 

At first, the idea of lying in bed until every last person trickles back is tempting. But Allura knows she wants to earn whatever sparkly thing Lance will bring to her, and therefore gets up from her bed once more. 

They've all gotten to know Atlas as a lively–living–ship, but when Allura wanders through the corridors the atmosphere that spreads comes closer to a ghost town. Allura doesn't let it disrupt her plans, and heads toward a destination that she knows is off-limits for most, but–as a Paladin–not for her. 

Just once she wants to see _it._

The dark entity. 

From the lab, Sam and Colleen, Allura knows as well as everyone else that they don't quite get it. It seems to be the polar opposite of quintessence, but then again as if the Speck of darkness was always rooted at the energy's core. 

Even with assumptions, they don't have proof. They don't know what it will do if let free. 

In one isolated room, _it_ is located in the middle, held back behind thick glass and with a particular magnetic field to restrain. 

A first gentle hum grows stronger the further Allura walks into the room, and before she even comes close to the glass, an image pops up in her head, so strong and vibrant that it feels real. 

The painful hallucination is over faster than it started, and Allura fights to hold onto a wall, to not spin out of control and collapse on the ground, with no one around to find her. 

The entity is levitating, pulsing, with no effect on it, and suddenly, glowing red. 

Allura does not feel fear, but she does indeed feel a thorough headache. Worse than the one she got when she first found out where the milk in milkshakes comes from. 

Despite the headache, there are other emotions in her that mix into a dangerous cocktail of instability which can leave her vulnerable, all alone like this.

There's a second headache, and Allura reaches out to touch glass. 

In hindsight, when every last Paladin visited her this morning, it didn’t feel like a goodbye as much as a farewell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw/spoilers:
> 
> This chapter features some Allurance but it doesn't go into much detail as it is not the focus of the fic.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to recommend this fic to others, feel free to link or retweet this [Tweet](https://twitter.com/CruelisB/status/1250842933500280832)!  
> I'm happy to hear about your thoughts or general comments, or even theories ✨


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